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| | | Is AI changing the profession of nursing—or are nurses changing AI? The truth is, it’s a both/and scenario, not an either/or. This comes through between the lines of a paper published April 16 in Nurse Leader. Refining the recent thinking of the American Organization for Nursing Leadership, the authors draw from discussions at an August 2024 symposium and a January 2025 “think tank” workshop. “Three core focus areas emerged for deeper exploration: nursing operations, professional education and industry partnerships,” write lead author Kelly Aldrich, DNP, RN, of Vanderbilt and colleagues. “These categories shaped the Think Tank discussions, in which a select group of nursing experts generated valuable insights and strategic recommendations, providing actionable guidance for nurse leaders navigating AI adoption and digital transformation.” The journal paper recounts key observations and conclusions from the workshop. The material is aimed primarily at nurse leaders but is readily accessible to nurses of every rank and station. In a section concentrating on the future of AI in nursing, the authors offer a handful of takeaways. Among them are these six. 1. AI is reshaping nursing operations, workforce management and care environments.The technology offers innovative ways to optimize workflows, enhance decision-making and reduce cognitive burden on care teams, the authors note. They add: ‘As AI tools become more sophisticated, nurse leaders must take an active role in shaping AI’s integration to ensure it supports rather than replaces nursing practice.’
2. AI-based predictive analytics will forecast staffing needs for nursing operations.This use case will also reduce reliance on manual scheduling and improve resource allocation, Aldrich and co-authors write. Further, AI-driven solutions will “offer personalized incentives to staff based on workload and skills. In turn, this capability may improve job satisfaction, retention and engagement.” ‘Additionally, AI can serve as a bridge between nursing students and employers, aligning educational preparation with workforce demands.’
3. AI may have a significant impact on nursing workflows and efficiencies. Strategies such as workload perception assessments (e.g., NASA Task Load Index) and patient flow analysis can help identify bottlenecks and optimize care delivery, the authors point out. ‘In perioperative settings, AI’s effectiveness could be evaluated through efficiency metrics such as turnover time, on-time surgical starts and accuracy in predicting procedure lengths.’
4. Healthcare leadership could take several steps to foster nurses’ trust in AI. Examples include ensuring seamless EHR integration, selecting intuitive user interfaces and making AI decision-making processes transparent, the authors suggest. ‘Ultimately, AI should not replace nurses but empower them, enhancing their ability to provide high-quality, person-centered care while optimizing operational outcomes.’
5. Nursing leadership must maintain focus on what nurses need to adopt AI. This means not only attending to the present moment but also planning for the short- and long-term future. By doing so, nursing leaders will “optimize current practice, prepare for future advancements and drive sustainable transformation,” the authors write. The end goal should be ‘ensuring that AI elevates safe patient care and strengthens our profession.’
6. Further, nurse leaders should step forward as AI innovators, educators and advocates. In this way, nurse leaders can harness the power of AI to enhance nursing practice, improve patient care and strengthen workforce sustainability, Aldrich et al. state. “The future of healthcare is being shaped today,” they add, “and nurse leaders must embrace this transformative journey with responsibility and foresight.” ‘Together, we can lead the digital transformation of healthcare, ensuring that it remains equitable and bias-free, ultimately benefiting our patients and communities.’
Aldrich’s co-authors are Esther Chipps, PhD, RN, of The Ohio State University and Patricia Mook, DNP, RN, of Advocate Health in Charlotte, N.C. Read the whole thing. |
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| | | Buzzworthy developments of the past few days. - Energy is building behind the Health Tech Investment Act. That’s the recently posted U.S. Senate bill that would expand and expedite reimbursements for clinicians who use AI-equipped and FDA-approved medical devices to diagnose and/or treat Medicare patients. This week the bill’s authors, Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), are underscoring the proposed legislation’s four main aims. These are to 1) formalize a payment pathway for such devices, 2) make sure older patients get access to them, 3) assure manufactures and providers they can be confident investing in medical AI, and 4) supply resources to help providers meet (still-developing) standards of care. If it becomes the law of the land, the Health Tech Investment Act will assign a code in the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (HOPPS) for a minimum of five years “so that adequate data regarding delivery and service costs is acquired before assignment of a permanent payment code,” Henrich and Rounds state in this week’s update. The bipartisan tag team, co-chairs of the Senate AI Caucus, also announce their bill has received endorsements from AdvaMed, the Alliance for Aging Research, the Brem Foundation to Defeat Breast Cancer, the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, the National Health Council, the National Psoriasis Foundation, Patients Rising and Right Scan Right Time. The concise bill, just six pages long, is here.
- Meanwhile makers of AI-enabled medical devices are feeling hamstrung by regulatory uncertainty. The locus of their concern is what’s going on at the FDA in the wake of the Trump administration’s pausing of guidance documents. The resulting ambiguity has some recalculating their risk tolerance. “The strategic plans we all have within our companies, and the project priorities, and the roadmaps—they remain unchanged,” Robert Cohen, president of several tech-heavy product lines at Stryker and a board member with the industry group AdvaMed, assures stakeholders. Speaking at an AdvaMed press conference April 22 covered by Regulatory Focus, Cohen suggests healthtech companies ask themselves if they’re flexible enough to weather whatever truly disruptive policies may come. He surely spoke for many when he said: “It’s not necessarily change, but we are sitting here with some healthy anxiety.”
- AI is producing healthcare financial advisors for patients. And it’s drawing the new crop from hospital administrators who used to work in revenue cycle management. No numbers are there to put data behind the observation, but one expert well-positioned to go by anecdotal evidence—as well as supply-and-demand dynamics in the healthcare workforce—believes he’s seeing such a shift. The trend is happening, Richard Gundling, a senior VP at the Healthcare Financial Management Association, tells Newsweek, because AI is making RCM people redundant with algorithms. But don’t worry. The shift is good for patients as well as their new monetary consultants. The redeployed pros “can have a more direct impact on patients by meeting with them to discuss their insurance benefits, copays and options for financial assistance if necessary,” Gundling says. There may be another unexpected benefit: prompting providers to work harder at transparency with patients and communications with payers. “AI is great to make sure everything [in the claims process] is completed quickly,” Gundling says. “But maybe it’s also a chance to step back and say, ‘Hey, instead of just speeding up a complex transaction, maybe it doesn’t have to be this complex in the first place.’” We can only hope.
- A health economist and entrepreneur has a healthcare AI testimonial to share. And the story has nothing to do with his professional expertise. It started about a year and a half ago when a relative received complicated biopsy results just ahead of a weekend. The loved one had comorbidities, the most troublesome of which was a rare form of multiple myeloma. An appropriate specialist would be hard to reach before Monday. The health economist turned to AI. Things turned out OK. Fast-forward to the present. “Today, my relative’s treatment continues to benefit from AI,” Michael Botta, PhD, relays in the Washington Post. “When we face uncertainty between appointments or need to interpret new test results, AI provides immediate, evidence-based guidance that complements our medical team’s expertise.” Along with the first-person account, the commentary has some worthwhile thoughts about healthcare AI for patients and providers alike. Check it out.
- In similar fashion, a dad turned to AI when his son needed more help than any human doctor seemed able to offer. In this case the AI aficionado, Julián Isla, was very familiar with the technology—he’s a software engineer for Microsoft. As it turned out, he had worries over a stricken child in common with Microsoft’s chairman and CEO, Satya Nadella, who has a son with cerebral palsy. The two men met and bonded over their shared parental challenges and tech-based hopes. After the Isla family received a diagnosis for young Sergio, the rare Dravet syndrome, the dad “quickly became one of Spain’s main advocates for rare diseases, championing better understanding and fighting for improved treatments for these little-known illnesses,” a Microsoft news item recounts. “As the years passed, Julián realized that computing could be a perfect ally, given that diagnosing rare diseases requires gathering and analyzing vast amounts of data and symptom information. ‘AI is a facilitator,’” Julián says. The piece features some heartwarming photos of the Isla family. See it here.
- Can you name a few healthcare AI companies that seem to be setting the pace for the rest of the field? Market research firm and publisher The Healthcare Technology Report can name even more. And does just that in its April 22 list of the vendors it sees as the top 25 in the category. All such exercises are by their nature subjective, of course. Still, it’s no idle thing to consider the businesses that THTR deems deserving of recognition for “empowering the healthcare industry and freeing up resources to shift focus to what matters most: patients.”
- It’s up for debate whether this is a healthy use of healthcare-adjacent AI. Digital twins of living humans—or once-living humans—have been around for a while. They can offer grieving survivors a way to interact with loved ones postmortem. But advanced AI has upped the game to where it may strike some as, for lack of a better word, ill-considered. Researchers are calling the latest iterations “generative ghosts.” Some of these AI apparitions plumb the depths of the Uncanny Valley. Others go beyond just looking and sounding like their deceased twins: They also generate new conversations with references to current events in the news and real-time happenings at home. Where might this go next? “In the future, a generative ghost might be used to weigh in on a contested will and other property and inheritance matters, especially when written documents leave room for doubt,” Pymnts comments in its solid coverage of the trend. “As a result, we may soon see AI clauses become standard in estate planning documents, much like healthcare proxies or advance directives are today.” Read aloud by the deceased, mind you. So we have that to look forward to. Or to dread.
- Recent research in the news:
- Funding news of note:
- From AIin.Healthcare’s news partners:
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