How AI can help emergency medicine

As more health systems look to incorporate artificial intelligence in their operations, Dr. Hamad Husainy sees the potential to use AI technology to improve the emergency department.

The chief medical officer of PointClickCare, Husainy talked about the use of AI in emergency medicine on the latest episode of Data Book, a podcast from Chief Healthcare Executive®. The podcast dropped today (see the link below).

Husainy is a physician with years of experience in emergency medicine. He says AI tools can help reduce the time doctors need to assess patients.

“The opportunity to remove barriers, to improve inefficiencies across that process for the clinical staff …. AI has the opportunity to accelerate it even faster,” he says.

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Husainy says AI technology can help provide better, more concise summaries that enable doctors to see the most relevant information faster.

“The reality about an electronic health record, it's a place to store everything, and when you store everything, unfortunately, it's very difficult to create a narrative that is effectively managed,” he says.

“So effectively, what we're talking about here is taking a lot of information and boiling it down to the most important information that's actionable and delivered at the right time when we're caring for patients,” Husainy says.

Husainy says that’s an area where AI can help doctors do their job more easily, and help patients get better care.

“Our lives are centered around consuming information as clinicians to be able to provide the best care for the people that we're serving,” he says. “And so this is just another example of how we can improve efficiency through automation. And also AI to be able to better take care of patients real time.”

Health systems can also use AI technology to use their resources better, and ensure patients get access to better care. It’s common for patients initially assessed at a smaller hospital to be transferred to a larger facility with more resources, and he says AI can help make sure patients get to the right hospital, rather than being transferred to a hospital that may have higher volume and less staff available.

When asked how often patients get transferred to the wrong facility, or at least the wrong floor, Husainy says, “I think it's a lot more common than the general public thinks.”

“There's so much inefficiency when we're trying to transport an effective story, or an effective narrative about a patient to go receive care at a different location, because that's what they need,” Husainy says.

AI technology can also help emergency departments reduce the number of unnecessary tests.

“We have a situation in the emergency department where a lot of times there's more patients then we can effectively tolerate,” he says.

Husainy pointed to CAT scans when they aren’t needed, which can add 75 to 90 minutes to a visit to the emergency department.

“Obviously, if a patient needs it, we're going to order it,” he says. “But if we knew that a patient had one done yesterday, being able to effectively get that report or recognize that it was negative and that the need to repeat that was probably minimal, the fact is, if we can work to minimize that, we're going to see shorter wait times. We're going to see faster admission times.”

He says AI technology can also help provide health systems with more insights into helping easier transitions for patients from the hospital to other facilities, including rehabilitation centers, nursing homes, and facilities for behavioral health treatment.

“I think this is a real opportunity to really break down those inefficiencies and transitions between clinical settings, even between social resources,” he says.

Check out our full conversation with Dr. Husainy about AI in hospitals in the link below. And you can subscribe to Data Book wherever you get your podcasts.