A symbiosis observed: How AI is refining the savviness of the e-patient
Although it sometimes still seems novel, modern AI didn’t arrive suddenly. By the time it settled into the public imagination, a long series of forerunner technologies had paved the way.
Within healthcare, the shoulders on which today’s AI stands span from the advent of the World Wide Web, email and electronic medical records to the ubiquity of smartphones, patient portals, telehealth and personal health wearables.
Tracing the progression, two researchers observe that innovations in digital health technology have “symbiotically evolved with the ascendance of the e-patient.”
The researchers, Daniel Sands, MD, MPH, of Harvard and healthcare journalist Nancy Finn, M.Ed, had their paper published in the Journal of Participatory Medicine.
Here are three of their points on the role of AI in the evolution of the e-patient.
1. The advent of chatbots built on large language models has profoundly changed how we search for and interact with health information.
For healthcare consumers, the availability of generative AI has “produced an explosion in patient access to advanced clinical information,” Sands and Finn point out. More:
In the words of [popular healthcare speaker] Dave deBronkart, as quoted in the New York Times: ‘Google gives you access to information. AI gives access to clinical thought.’
2. AI chatbots have been a boon for patients, allowing them to better participate in their care decisions.
These tools have enabled patients to diagnose conditions even “when their physicians have been unable to do so, underscoring the empowering nature of having access to clinical reasoning,” Sands and Finn write.
“Leveraging AI, patients can combine large quantities of self-tracking data and data from their medical records to gain new insights into their health, leading to proposals for responsible governance.” More:
The future uses of these technologies will continue to expand, pushed by technology-savvy e-patients.
3. We must be considerate about introducing any technology, but AI presents unique ethical challenges.
Concerns regarding patient safety, quality and data privacy and security—along with the stability of different care models that prioritize equity and inclusion at an affordable cost—are all “crucial questions that currently lack satisfactory answers,” Sands and Finn remark.
“We anticipate that, as digital health technologies continue to evolve, e-patients will continue to leverage these technologies to facilitate self-care and improvements in their healthcare experiences.”
This, in turn, will spur the evolution of the next generation of digital health technologies.
- In other research:
- Northwestern: AI identifies key gene sets that cause complex disease
- University of Texas: How adding AI may improve mammography screenings
- Charité–Berlin University of Medicine: AI model detects more than 170 types of cancer
- Northwestern: AI identifies key gene sets that cause complex disease
- Funding:
- Prepared raises $80M to expand AI-powered emergency response platform
- AI-powered healthcare transcription platform Lyrebird raises $12M
- Swiss HealthTech startup Aeon raises €8.2 million ($9.4M) to scale AI preventive health platform
- Amperos Health secures $4.2M in seed funding, launches AI billing solution for healthcare denials and collections
- Prepared raises $80M to expand AI-powered emergency response platform
- Regulatory:
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.