The conversation on artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare has shifted. A couple of years ago, the question was, “What AI use cases might work for our organization?” Today, boards and CFOs are asking a far more pointed question: “What are we actually getting for what we’ve invested in?”
This is a critical inflection point, not unlike the tidal wave of electronic health record (EHR) adoption that followed the HITECH Act. Hospitals and health systems that got their EHR foundations right back then are still reaping the benefits. The ones that moved forward without a plan are still untangling the mess.
The same dynamic will play out with AI. To get compounding, lasting value, rather than a handful of isolated wins, there are three foundational things your organization needs to get right, right now.
A whole patient picture, greater than the sum of its parts
Fragmented systems are the enemy of effective AI. Despite nationwide efforts to improve interoperability, essential information frequently remains isolated in separate EHRs and databases. Inconsistent data formats and standards also continue to impede data exchange, both between and within organizations.
Without a full view of the patient, care coordination declines, provider confidence in decision-making dwindles and AI outputs reflect a fraction of the existing information instead of the true clinical reality.
From AI to value-based care and beyond, the opportunities before your organization today are immense. Seizing them to the fullest extent will hinge on how freely the data flows.
Committing to basic compliance with information blocking and other regulations will simply check a box for your organization. Leveraging a modern data platform built on standards like FHIR will launch lasting ripple effects.
When a single platform brings together hospital visits, outpatient checkups, labs, and medications, clinicians can make more informed decisions, and AI tools can draw on a clear patient picture.
As data moves more readily, healthcare organizations can also remove the need for patients to recount their entire medical histories at each visit. Patients who are forced to repeat information that should be in their records report significantly lower levels of trust in their care teams and rate their care experiences more poorly.
Most patients are already skeptical about AI, and they don’t need another reason to mistrust greater use of technology in their care. When data flows without friction, it can follow the patient wherever they go – and improve patient outcomes, experiences and long-term system loyalty along the way.
Governance from the ground up
Our industry still has a data usability problem. In fact, approximately 97% of healthcare data goes unused. Even when it is available, it is not always trusted to act upon.
Many healthcare organizations spend as much as 75% of their data efforts just on locating, cleaning and validating it, diverting time and resources that could be spent on analytics and AI use cases that would deliver tangible value. That’s three-quarters of your investment going toward plumbing, not performance improvements.
A modern data governance framework helps right-size that ratio. Intelligent platforms leveraging AI and machine learning can improve data mapping and anomaly detection, unify data from diverse sources, and standardize code sets to create a single source of truth for clinical and operational teams. Modern platforms like CareIntelligence take this a step further, enabling users to rule out lower-quality data based on transparency scores and lineage tracking.
When the data is trusted and traceable, each new AI use case builds on what came before without inheriting the same old quality problems and need for rework. That’s a multiplier effect: one bedrock investment creating value across dozens of applications downstream, AI or otherwise.
Who’s in the boat with you?
Most health systems simply don’t have the internal capacity to build sophisticated AI capabilities from scratch. At the same time, off-the-shelf solutions rarely fit the complexity or uniqueness of your organization’s workflows, patient population or strategic priorities.
In navigating this new frontier, your organization needs a partner that has deep healthcare expertise, the flexibility and configurability to meet your needs, and a real stake in your outcomes.
The organizations that invest today in the right technical foundation, with the right players in place, are the ones that will look back five years from now and understand why their investments compounded while their competitors stalled.
Technology will keep evolving. The question is whether you’re positioning your organization to keep pace. Get that right, and the ROI will follow.
Learn how Altera Digital Health is leveraging AI to enable clinicians, empower patients and transform healthcare organizations here.
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