Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy.\u00a0Learn more<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n What would it be like to chat with health records the way one could with ChatGPT?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Initially posed by a medical student, this question sparked the development of ChatEHR at Stanford Health Care. Now in production, the tool accelerates chart reviews for emergency room admissions, streamlines patient transfer summaries and synthesizes information from complex medical histories.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early pilot results, clinical users have experienced significantly sped-up information retrieval; notably, emergency physicians saw 40% reduced chart review time during critical handoffs, Michael A. Pfeffer, Stanford\u2019s SVP and chief information and digital officer, said today in a fireside chat at VB Transform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This helps to decrease physician burnout while improving patient care, and builds upon decades of work medical facilities have been doing to collect and automate critical data.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s such an exciting time in healthcare because we\u2019ve been spending the last 20 years digitizing healthcare data and putting it into an electronic health record, but not really transforming it,\u201d Pfeffer said in a chat with VB editor-in-chief Matt Marshall. \u201cWith the new large language model technologies, we\u2019re actually starting to do that digital transformation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Physicians spend up to 60% of their time on administrative tasks rather than direct patient care. They often put in significant \u201cpajama time,\u201d sacrificing<\/span> personal and family hours to complete administrative tasks outside of regular work hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of Pfeffer\u2019s big goals is to streamline workflows and reduce those extra hours so clinicians and administrative staff can focus on more important work.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, a lot of information comes in through online patient portals. AI now has the ability to read messages from patients and draft responses that a human can then review and approve for sending.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of like a starting point,\u201d he explained. \u201cWhile it doesn\u2019t necessarily save time, which is interesting, it does actually reduce cognitive burnout.\u201d What\u2019s more, he noted, the messages tend to be more patient friendly, because users can instruct the model to use certain language.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moving on to agents, Pfeffer said they\u2019re a \u201cpretty new\u201d concept in healthcare but offer promising opportunities.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n For instance, patients with cancer diagnoses typically have a team of specialists who review their records and determine the next treatment steps. However, preparing is a lot of work; clinicians and staff have to go through a patient\u2019s entire record, not just their EHR but imaging pathology, sometimes genomic data, and information on clinical trials that patients might be a good match for. All of these have to come together for the team to create a timeline and recommendations, Pfeffer explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe most important thing that we can do for our patients is to make sure they have appropriate care, and it takes a multidisciplinary approach,\u201d said Pfeffer.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The goal is to build agents into ChatEHR that can generate a summary and timeline and make recommendations for clinician review. Pfeffer emphasized that it doesn\u2019t replace, it prepares \u201cjust incredible summary recommendations in a multimodal way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n This allows medical teams to do now \u201cactual patient care,\u201d which is critical amidst a physician and nursing shortage.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese technologies are going to shift the time physicians and nurses spend doing administrative tasks,\u201d he said. And, when combined with ambient AI scribes that take over notetaking duties, medical staff are focusing more time on patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat face-to-face interaction is just priceless,\u201d said Pfeffer. \u201cWe\u2019re going to see AI shift more to clinician-patient interaction.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before ChatEHR, Pfeffer\u2019s team rolled out SecureGPT to all of Stanford Medicine; the secure portal features 15 different models that anyone can tinker with. \u201cWhat is really powerful about this technology is that you can really open it up to so many people to experiment,\u201d said Pfeffer.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stanford is taking a varied approach to AI development, building its own models and using a mix of secure and private off-the-shelf (such as Microsoft Azure) and open-source models where appropriate. Pfeffer explained that his team is \u201cnot completely specific\u201d to one or the other, but rather goes with what will likely work best for a specific use case.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s so many amazing kinds of technologies now that if you can piece them together in the right way, you can get solutions like what we\u2019ve built,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another credit to Stanford is its multidisciplinary team; as opposed to a chief AI officer or AI group, Pfeffer gathered a chief data scientist, two informaticists, a chief medical information officer and a chief nursing information officer, and their CTO and CISO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe bring together informatics, data science and traditional IT, and wrap that into the architecture; what you get is this magic group that allows you to do these very complex projects,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately, Stanford views AI as a tool that everybody should know how to use, Pfeffer emphasized. Different teams need to understand how to use AI so that when they meet with business owners and come up with ways to solve problems, \u201cAI is just part of how they think.\u201d<\/p>\n Daily insights on business use cases with VB Daily<\/strong><\/p>\n If you want to impress your boss, VB Daily has you covered. We give you the inside scoop on what companies are doing with generative AI, from regulatory shifts to practical deployments, so you can share insights for maximum ROI.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tThanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n An error occured.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>How ChatEHR helps reduce \u2018pajama time,\u2019 get back to real face-to-face interactions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Amazing\u2019 technologies coupled with a multidisciplinary team<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vb-news\/brand\/img\/vb-daily-phone.png\")
\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n