Agentic AI is making its way into healthcare, and Minneapolis-based Allina Health is one of the early adopters of the technology.
The 12-hospital system recently launched “Alli,” an AI agent that answers calls and handles tasks such as canceling an appointment or refilling a prescription. Allina Health is also piloting agentic AI in its Epic EHR to identify care gaps.
“It’s only going to grow,” Allina Health Chief Digital and Information Officer Dave Ingham, DO, told Becker’s. “We’re positioning two tracks within Allina Health: an operational AI assistant and a clinical AI assistant. Alli is very heavy on that operational side, but we’ll be trying to build out use cases and agentic tools to help in both of those different tracks.”
Alli is already able to handle about 5% of the calls that the health system’s 600-person call center staff normally receives, Dr. Ingham said. As the tool grows to do more complex tasks, such as rescheduling appointments, that number could increase to 15-20%. The health system is not filling call center roles as aggressively as it had in the past, and could reduce headcount through attrition.
Agentic AI is also searching patient charts to determine, for instance, whether they’re due for a colonoscopy or diabetic retina exam.
“Previously, we’d have humans doing that: quality people searching for that so we can meet regulatory measures, or clinicians searching for it in the chart to document it and make sure that they’re providing appropriate care,” Dr. Ingham said.
Allina Health also built an AI tool that automatically drafts patient summaries for e-consults with specialists.
“There’s no shortage of excitement here,” Dr. Ingham said. “We’re honing in on appropriate uses and making sure we’re being responsible with deployments by protecting privacy and security. At Allina, we’re moving pretty aggressively in the AI space to help our clinicians, help our patients, and make the whole process as seamless and simple as possible.”
