Photo: Sean Anthony Eddy/Getty Images
Among just some of the new health IT product announcements this month: Smart hospital technology Artisight is integrating with Epic to transform hospital televisions into an artificial intelligence-powered sensory network to support nurses' clinical documentation. Also: Mayo Clinic is collaborating with startup AI company Ubie to develop a new enterprise-grade patient experience platform.
Turning bedside TVs into EHR tools
Artisight said a new AI integration with Epic electronic health records can now automate routine clinical tasks and enhance patient oversight without adding more screens or gadgets at the bedside.
Artisight's Smart Hospital Platform is integrated into Epic's MyChart Bedside TV app for standard hospital room televisions, and its features can help nurses complete their clinical tasks, according to an announcement Tuesday.
The connected system turns bedside TV hardware into an inpatient virtual care platform and workflow automation tool with several features. It uses NVIDIA's AI-powered computer vision and ambient sensing technology to bridge the gap between physical hospital hardware and the patient's digital medical record.
The platform uses AI sensors to detect events – such as patients at high risk for falls attempting to get out of bed – as well as document them in real time and alert care teams.
Nurses can also capture and document clinical conversations in Epic flowsheets and launch two-way video calls to the patient's TV from Hyperspace or Rover applications to conduct remote admissions, discharge education and virtual observation.
"This expansion represents the next step in making the hospital itself an intelligent, connected system," Dr. Andrew Gostine, Artisight's CEO and co-founder, said in a statement. "By deeply integrating with Epic across the bedside, virtual care and operational workflows, we're eliminating friction for clinicians and creating a more engaging, responsive experience for patients."
Streamlining digital front doors
Following a 30-week pilot with Mayo Clinic's Platform Accelerate program, healthcare AI company Ubie announced it is co-developing a new patient navigation platform with the health system to reinvent how patients access and engage.
The company's 24/7 interface, called Ubie Smart Support, will integrate chat and voice into a single patient access point across Mayo Clinic's care units, according to an announcement Feb. 12.
The collaborators plan to incorporate clinical assessments, triage and scheduling capabilities to route patients to the appropriate care setting based on their symptoms and coverage. In the future, an add-on chronic disease management module could enable patients to track adherence to care plans, receive personalized recommendations, monitor trends and bring to the surface issues that require escalation to care teams, the company said.
For health systems, streamlined patient navigation could help to address operational challenges, including call center overload, scheduling friction and inconsistent patient experiences. Natural conversations in patients' preferred channels, instant answers, and a seamless flow from triage assessment to appointment scheduling could also improve contact resolution and self-service completion rates and experience scores.
"Ubie's collaboration with Mayo Clinic is a significant step to further our mission of guiding everyone to the right care, where the needs of the patient come first," Kota Kubo, Ubie cofounder and co-CEO, said in a statement.
Enabling AI to update documentation
Ambience Healthcare is expanding its use of AI to analyze patient charts and update relevant documentation, the company announced Feb. 12.
Expanded use of AI will interpret a patient's full longitudinal record, including prior notes, diagnoses, labs, imaging, medications, pathology and more, and apply its analyses directly to documentation and coding workflows.
New Chart-Aware Patient Summaries organize a patient's longitudinal history by diagnosis, the company said. Clinicians can see everything related to a condition in one place, without reviewing the chart note-by-note. Other capabilities include Chart-Aware Assessment & Plan generation to improve documentation and ensure treatment plans reflect what changed during patient encounters.
The expanded AI features are available to all health system customers, while expanded AI diagnostics in alpha are expected to become available in the coming months. AI coding assistance in pilot testing with select partners could arrive later this year, the company noted.
"AI in healthcare has to do more than generate notes," Nikhil Buduma, Ambience Healthcare's CEO and co-founder, said in a statement. "Health systems need AI that synthesizes across the chart, supports clinical decision-making, and delivers real operational and financial impact."
Adding clinical trial matching
OpenEvidence said Feb. 6 that it has added a new Clinical Trial Matching tool within its clinical decision support platform to simplify finding accessible, medically appropriate options for patients.
The tool can analyze a patient's specific diagnosis and treatment history against complex eligibility criteria and then identify relevant studies. Platform users employ natural conversation to filter trials by study design, enrollment status and precise geographic proximity, the company said.
Of note, OpenEvidence and Veeva Systems announced in October that they are developing a new AI-powered platform to bridge the gap between peer-reviewed evidence and medical care. Called Open Vista, that platform is expected to launch later this year.
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
