A new consortium comprising nurse leaders from health systems and rural providers will work to develop an AI-powered assistant platform designed for nurses.
Convened by Suki, which specializes in AI-enabled clinical support tools, the nursing consortium will focus on frontline administrative burdens, the company said – beginning with the most commonly used forms and flowsheets.
WHY IT MATTERS
The platform in development, which will be called Suki for Nurses, is meant to integrate with major electronic health records systems to help manage time-consuming daily tasks such as patient assessments and admission forms, the company said on Wednesday.
Inaugural members of the nursing consortium include Florence, South Carolina-based McLeod Health, which uses Epic; Fisher-Titus of Norwalk, Ohio, which is on the Oracle Health EHR; and two rural providers using Meditech.
More health systems are expected to join the effort, said Suki officials.
Suki formed the new consortium to incorporate frontline perspectives into workflows and ensure that new AI tools for nurses enable them to provide a greater focus on patient care.
"By partnering with innovative health systems across the country, we gain a unique advantage – insights from every corner of healthcare, from large networks to rural hospitals to solutions providers," said Punit Soni, Suki founder and CEO, in a statement.
"Each partner brings a different perspective on nursing workflows, enabling Suki to both provide and power AI solutions in a scalable, expedited fashion that will ensure maximum adoption of this technology."
"Our partnership with Suki has already significantly reduced the administrative burden on our providers, and we’re excited to work alongside other leading health systems in this consortium to build an offering for nurses," added Ashley Huggins, director of IT clinical informatics at McLeod Health.
Suki also said in the announcement that AvaSure, a virtual care services company used by 1,100 hospitals, will incorporate its AI technology to allow nurses and physicians to complete visit, admission or discharge documentation hands-free.
"We’ve always been committed to delivering measurable results for health systems – improving patient safety, reducing workforce strain and expanding access to care," said Jacob Hansen, AvaSure's chief product and technology officer, in a statement. "This partnership with Suki is the next step in powering the ‘Smart Room of the Future’ – merging ambient documentation and virtual care to transform care delivery."
THE LARGER TREND
Nurses are interested in support from AI so they can focus on their roles in patient care, but are often wary of the technology's effects on staffing.
Betty Jo Rocchio, Mercy's SVP and chief nurse executive, said her organization has deployed AI to support its nurse workforce, and staff experience and cost efficiency metrics are up.
One of the goals of implementing AI in emergency room nurse workflows was to address the 240 minutes per shift they were spending in the EHR, which she said were adding mental load and higher rates of nurse burnout across Mercy.
"The whole goal, between attacking work environment and workflows, is to decrease that cognitive workload on the nurse," Rocchio explained in her keynote at the 2024 HIMSS AI in Healthcare Forum.
Suki – which offers AI clinical assistant integrations with several EHRs, telehealth platforms such as Zoom's and other technologies in care settings such as nursing facilities and home health – said it is expanding into developing AI nursing assistant integrations because one in four nurses cited burnout and chronic understaffing as their reasons for leaving the profession.
In August, Soni sat down with Healthcare IT News to discuss how deeper integration into a health system's EHR requires more than just an add-on ambient assistant to write notes.
He made the case that AI is more effective when it works behind the scenes to document all patient issues discussed, extract the diagnoses, attach billing codes, send prescriptions and prepare clinical notes so doctors can be more present in their patient encounters.
"That's what Suki does," said Soni. "It's an assistant that can do all of these activities, so the doctor only does one thing, which is look at [the patient] in the eye, ask him how he's feeling, and make sure he can focus on what matters most, which is patient care."
ON THE RECORD
"AI has been a transformative force in healthcare, enabling providers to be more present with their patients," said Huggins in a statement announcing the new nursing consortium. "Through this collaboration, we’ll bring the power of this technology to a critical member of the care team – nurses – with the goal of enhancing the quality of care and creating a more efficient, sustainable healthcare system."
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
