Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare is piloting a generative AI-powered tool aimed at improving how nurses exchange patient information during shift changes, one of the most routine — but critical — tasks in hospital care.
The tool, called Nurse Handoff, was developed by HCA Healthcare’s Digital Transformation and Innovation department in collaboration with Google Cloud. It is currently being tested in five hospitals within the HCA system.
The tool integrates with EHRs and uses Google’s MedLM models to generate concise, AI-assisted shift summaries. Nurses can view the patient record on one side of a mobile screen and the AI-generated report on the other. The goal is to simplify shift preparation, reduce documentation time and improve communication accuracy, according to a July 29 news release from Google.
Early feedback on the tool has been largely positive. At one HCA hospital, nurses rated the tool as 86% accurate and 90% helpful. If the pilot continues to perform well, HCA plans to roll out the solution systemwide to its 99,000 nurses.
