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Cranfield, UK, 1st February 2024, Written by Vlad Kozynchenko –
As we usher in the new year, January has already proven to be filled with ground-breaking announcements and advancements in generative AI, especially within the healthcare sector. The prestigious J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference marked the beginning of the month, setting the stage for several noteworthy unveilings.
Industry
Cerebras Systems, an AI technology company, has announced a collaboration with Mayo Clinic to develop large language models (LLMs) for medical applications. The multi-year collaboration focuses on leveraging Cerebras’ generative AI compute and Mayo Clinic’s longitudinal data repository to accelerate breakthrough insights in healthcare. The collaboration aims to create patient-centric healthcare AI models to improve patient outcomes, diagnoses, treatment planning, and outcome estimation. The initial deliverable is a Rheumatoid Arthritis diagnostic model, utilising patient records, DNA, and drug molecules to match patients with appropriate therapeutics.
Option Care Health, a post-acute care and infusion services provider, has entered into a multi-year partnership with Palantir Technologies to leverage its Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) across its operations. Option Care Health plans to utilise AIP, which includes AI and LLMs, to optimise various aspects of its operations, such as nurse scheduling, patient onboarding, purchasing, and supply chain execution. The collaboration aims to enhance efficiency, reduce administrative burdens, and improve patient care. Palantir has been expanding its presence in healthcare, signing contracts with various health systems, including Cleveland Clinic, Tampa General Hospital, and HCA Healthcare, to use AIP to improve patient flows and staffing.
Following its announcement of Sara Scribe at the JPM event, at the Arab Health 2024, Innovaccer launched InScribe, an AI technology that transcribes, analyses, and summarises conversations between healthcare providers and patients in ambulatory care settings. InScribe has two offerings: an enterprise version integrated with InNote, Innovaccer’s point-of-care assistant, and an individual version for independent practitioners and small provider groups. Integrated with InNote, Innovaccer’s point-of-care assistant for clinicians, aims to elevate the experience of InNote users with relevant documentation and clinical insights drawn from EHR and claims data. The tool uses advanced AI to prepare encounter notes, offering clinical insights to reduce documentation time and streamline workflows. It appears that there are no discernible new functionalities introduced between the two products, suggesting a potential rebranding of the solution.
Earlier this month, healthtech company Nabla has successfully raised $24 million in Series B funding, with Cathay Innovation and Zebox leading the investment. Currently integrated with major EHRs like Epic and Nextgen, Copilot already handles over 3 million consultations annually in three languages. The funding will support Nabla in accelerating its expansion in the US market. My colleague Allan Stoddart recently wrote an Insight on Nabla’s Funding and an Open Approach to gen AI.
Transcription solution provider iMedX has partnered with US firm DeliverHealth to introduce a roadmap for generative AI documentation and speech recognition technology in Australia and New Zealand. iMedX will utilise DeliverHealth’s eSOne platform to enhance clinical documentation solutions. The partnership aims to transform traditional transcription services by offering features such as improved speech recognition options for clinicians, real-time turnaround for clinical documentation using AI, and advanced integration technology for workflow automation.
Maine Employers’ Mutual Insurance Company (MEMIC), a workers’ compensation insurance specialist, has partnered with CLARA Analytics to leverage CLARA Optics, an AI-driven technology platform, to enhance medical outcomes for injured workers, improve claims management efficiencies, and reduce administrative burdens for adjusters and nurse case managers (NCMs). CLARA Optics utilises predictive AI and generative AI to automate the transcription of medical records, extract meaningful details, and deliver actionable insights to claims management personnel. The technology helps claims managers stay updated on changes, summarise case status, and highlight critical information. With this innovative AI solution, MEMIC aims to improve efficiencies, reduce documentation time, and lower claim costs. CLARA Optics is set to launch this year and is expected to enhance clinician productivity and streamline workflows in workers’ compensation claims.
Saama, an organisation that develops life science solutions that accelerate the delivery of therapies to patients, introduced gen AI chat and Interactive Review Listings (IRL) features in its AI-driven platform. These features facilitate natural language interaction with data, enabling instant responses and eliminating analysis delays. IRL enables collaboration among data managers, medical monitors, and vendors within a unified system, streamlining comprehensive data reviews. Additionally, Saama introduced Data Quality (DQ) Co-Pilot, a GenAI feature that eliminates manual programming for data quality checks. The platform enhancements aim to break down operational silos, accelerate development timelines, and transform drug development. Saama’s solutions reduce the time from data capture to query generation and enhance clinical trial management processes.
Earlier this month, Aignostics benchmarked its foundation model, RudolfV, which exhibited higher accuracy than published alternatives on key public datasets. Despite not being trained on the highest number of slides in the comparison, RudolfV covers a wide range of stains across almost 60 tissue types and 15+ labs in Europe and the US. The success is attributed to a “pathologist-led” development approach and meticulous data curation. The company plans to deploy RudolfV as the “base model” for all histopathology-related client work to enhance accuracy and reduce time-to-model for new developments.
Regulation
The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued new guidance on the ethics and governance of LMMs. The guidance provides over 40 recommendations for governments, technology companies, and healthcare providers to ensure the appropriate use of LMMs, considering potential benefits in diagnosis, clinical care, patient-guided use, administrative tasks, medical education, and scientific research. It also highlights risks, such as bias and incomplete information, and emphasises stakeholder engagement in developing and deploying LMMs.
The Signify View
As we navigate the myriad announcements surrounding ambient listening tools, the healthcare domain resonates with the term “low-hanging fruit” for these innovative solutions. While their integration may not be straightforward, this use case proves more accessible for efficient generative AI applications compared to intricate tasks such as drafting radiology reports from X-ray images.
Anticipate that 2023 and 2024 will be dominated by discussions on this subject, given its potential to address three pivotal challenges in healthcare: staff shortages, clinician burnout, and overarching financial crises.
- Streamlining workflows and minimising time-consuming tasks allows clinicians to attend to more patients, bridging the gap between supply and demand.
- The advent of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) two decades ago increased clinician workloads, contributing to burnout. Ambient listening simplifies note-taking and seamlessly integrates with EHRs, alleviating non-core aspects of clinicians’ responsibilities.
- Furthermore, the reliance on medical scribes is being challenged by AI’s reliability and cost-effectiveness. Unlike human counterparts, AI operates tirelessly without vacations or family emergencies, making it a compelling alternative. As ambient listening technology advances, it’s only a matter of time before healthcare systems focused on value-based care opt to cut costs and embrace AI.
2024 could well be the pivotal year when ambient listening becomes the new norm. Looking ahead, the next frontier involves summarising comprehensive healthcare information, spanning patients’ medical history, clinically-based evidence, and prior reports.
Stay tuned for Signify Research’s upcoming report on Vendor Opportunities and Strategies in Medical Imaging and Clinical IT. It offers deep insights into prevalent use cases and applications within this sub-sector. To delve further, click here; alternatively, feel free to reach out. Whether you’re interested in research or wish to discuss market trends and challenges, I’m always open for a chat.
Thank you for investing your time in this update, and I wish you a fantastic day ahead! 👋
About Vlad Kozynchenko
Vlad joined Signify Research in 2023 as a Senior Market Analyst in the Digital Health team. He brings several years of experience in the consulting industry, having undertaken strategy, planning, and due diligence assignments for governments, operators, and service providers. Vlad holds an MSc degree with distinction in Business with Consulting from the University of Warwick.
About Signify Research
Signify Research provides healthtech market intelligence powered by data that you can trust. We blend insights collected from in-depth interviews with technology vendors and healthcare professionals with sales data reported to us by leading vendors to provide a complete and balanced view of the market trends. Our coverage areas are Medical Imaging, Clinical Care, Digital Health, Diagnostic and Lifesciences and Healthcare IT.
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