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This week we are tracking an uptick of new announcements focused on artificial intelligence releases that give doctors, specialists, health plan support agents and more the power to reduce administrative burdens and serve patients and members.
Of note, a medical practice in Wisconsin said it is the first to fully integrate Epic Systems' new AI charting tool that is saving doctors 60 minutes per day, and a health system in the Southwest is expanding its use of RhythmX AI to better serve patients.
Corti launches AI agent library on NVIDIA
Because agents often break down once exposed to real workflows, a new Agent Library from Corti, a vendor of AI infrastructure, includes preconfigured AI agents and specialized experts that healthcare customers can apply to common use cases.
Organizations can also build fully custom agents and scale without clinical risk because the platform validates actions against clinical protocols in submilliseconds and offers real-time tracking for regulatory compliance and insurance indemnity.
Essentially, the infrastructure governs what AI is allowed to do, according to Andreas Cleve, Corti CEO and cofounder.
The agent framework addresses deployment gaps with real-time governed execution and no added latency under Model Context Protocol and Agent-to-Agent standards that allow custom agents to inherit Corti's governance automatically, according to an announcement Tuesday from the company.
"Healthcare doesn't need smarter agents – it needs safer autonomy," Cleve said in a statement. "Intelligence without control is a liability in clinical environments."
More than 100 of Corti's customers are piloting the Agent Framework to automate nurse triage workflows that previously could not move into production.
"That's the difference between experimentation and deployment, between replacing software and plugging labor gaps," Cleve said.
"Corti is introducing a new category of GPU workload: governed execution," added Lars Maaløe, Corti CTO and cofounder.
Wisconsin becomes first to use Epic AI charting
The Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin said Monday that it is the first healthcare organization to adopt Epic's new HIPAA-compliant AI charting tool. The medical practice is using the healthcare-specific AI to capture medical visits, both in-person and virtual and organize the data into a formal medical record.
"This technology fundamentally changes the experience of a healthcare visit," Dr. Chris Kastman, the practice's chief medical officer, said in Epic's statement. "AI Charting supports our providers behind the scenes so they can focus on what matters most, including listening to their patients, building trust and making shared decisions together."
While providers must review and approve the AI-generated medical records work, the ambient recordings from patient encounters, stored briefly, according to Epic, are not used to train the AI models.
The tool "has brought me back to why I went to medical school in the first place – to connect face-to-face with patients, not with a computer," added Dr. Matthew Swedlund, the practice's senior medical director.
Epic worked with the provider to develop AI charting, according to Corey Miller, the electronic health record giant's vice president of research and development. "When they say it's improving their patient visits and working lives, it's a reminder of why we at Epic do what we do," he said in a statement.
New Mexico health system rolls out precision care AI
After piloting AI technology across 10,000 patient encounters under value-based care arrangements, Presbyterian Healthcare Services, an integrated delivery system in the Southwest that serves urban and rural populations, said Tuesday that it is moving forward with enterprise-wide expansion of the RhythmXs AI's precision care platform.
The platform, which integrates directly into the provider's Epic EHR, reduces administrative burdens by automating the labor-intensive process of manual chart reviews, PHS said.
The company said PHS clinicians access relevant clinical histories, social drivers of health and guideline-based recommendations in a single consolidated workflow, while the platform's AI assistant answers patient-specific questions about their health.
"We have patients who drive two hours for a 30-minute visit, and so we have to make every minute count," said Lori Walker, PHS's chief medical information officer. "It’s AI that is having a real impact on improving access, elevating quality and delivering a better experience for our patients and clinicians."
Humana creates member agent AI
Humana announced that it is releasing an AI assistant to all member advocates in the year ahead, which can help them provide more personalized support and timely answers to members' health benefit and eligibility questions.
The agent, built with Google Cloud AI last year, will be available to more than 20,000 member advocates through existing call center systems, who handle nearly 80 million calls per year.
It summarizes call conversations in real time and surfaces relevant information and guidance, helping reduce manual workloads and improve training for the health plan agents, Humana said.
However, the advocates remain accountable for member engagement.
The agent relies on Google Cloud's Vertex AI, Gemini and Gemini Enterprise for Customer for data privacy, security and transparency. Humana said the AI's performance is continuously reviewed and monitored to ensure compliance and performance.
"Our collaboration with Humana is a blueprint for the future of healthcare – where technology doesn't replace the human element, but radically enhances it," Chris Sakalosky, Google Cloud vice president of strategic industries, said in the announcement. "By integrating Gemini Enterprise for CX, we're giving Humana's advocates an agent that handles the complexity of benefits in the background, so they can focus on the empathy and care that members deserve."
Oracle Health adds order creation to clinical AI agent
Oracle Health said Monday that its Clinical AI Agent now provides clinicians with automated order creation that relies on ambient listening during appointments and analyzes previous order activity, patient order history, physician ordering favorites and organizational ordering preferences.
Doctors review and approve auto-generated orders for laboratory tests, imaging, diagnostics, prescription medications and follow-up appointments.
"From supporting clinicians with greater intelligence at the point of care to reducing the administrative burdens that drive up costs and increase burnout to fueling medical breakthroughs that can accelerate the delivery of lifesaving therapies to patients that need them, Oracle Health is using AI to drive transformation across the healthcare industry," Seema Verma, executive vice president and general manager at Oracle Health and Life Sciences, said in a statement.
Since its launch in the U.S. last year, the clinical AI agent has saved doctors more than 200,000 hours, the company said.
"These new clinical order capabilities are another step in our journey to an AI-powered healthcare system that works for patients, providers and payers alike."
NexTech releases ambient scribe for specialties
Last week, Nextech launched its Cora Scribe – an AI-powered specialty care clinical documentation tool integrated into its EHR platform developed through a collaboration with medical practices.
Cora, already in use by ophthalmologists, uses natural language processing technology to summarize patient-provider conversations in real time and auto-populate data into specific EHR fields.
"Nextech has prioritized the user experience and has created a revolutionary product that is going to fundamentally change how we interact with the EMR for the better. ... [It will] allow users to turn their focus back to where it belongs, with the patients," Dr. Neel Vaidya, chief information officer at Chicago Cornea Consultants, said in the tech company's announcement.
"Being truly helpful in the exam room demands more than simple note-taking – it requires alignment with clinical workflows, and that’s what sets Cora apart," added Rusty Frantz, Nextech's CEO.
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
