Literature Review

AI and change management: Navigating the human side of AI Method; by Jaon Rome; 10/14/24 ... An effective AI change management strategy must consider multiple employee groups — including front-, middle-, and back-office workers — whom AI implementation most affects. How you talk about AI and introduce AI tools to your employees influences how your people perceive AI, which affects their acceptance and adoption of it. ... Your AI investments’ success depends on your people. They must buy into AI’s value, see themselves as innovating with AI rather than training their replacements, and use the AI tools you’ve built in their day-to-day work.

Ransomware attack at Texas health system spreadsBecker's Health IT; by Giles Bruce; 10/9/24When hackers strike a health system, it can have far-reaching effects beyond just the original target. That's been the case with the Sept. 26 ransomware attack against Lubbock, Texas-based UMC Health System. That event has also ensnared Lubbock-based Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and Texas Tech Physicians, which share IT systems with UMC Health. The medical school and its affiliated physician group are now in downtime, unable to access their EHR or receive patient portal messages or faxes. Their phone lines are experiencing intermittent outages as well. However, their clinics remain open, as do their pharmacies, albeit with reduced capacity.

Research suggests AI could enhance patient safety, but raises questions The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC); by Hayden E. Klein; 9/26/24 A new study from Boston University highlighted the potential of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to improve patient safety in health care. Published in The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, the study tested the widely used AI model GPT-4 on the Certified Professional in Patient Safety (CPPS) exam, where it answered 88% of questions correctly. Researchers believe AI could help reduce medical errors, estimated to cause 400,000 deaths annually, by assisting clinicians in identifying and addressing safety risks in hospitals and clinics. ... The study authors suggested that AI has promise in helping doctors better recognize, address, and prevent mistakes or accidental harm in hospitals and clinics. ... However, the study also highlighted critical limitations of current AI technologies, including the risk of bias, fabricated data, and false confidence in responses. 

77% of health system IT employees eyeing new jobs Becker's Health IT; Naomi Diaz; 9/25/24 Health system IT employees are keeping their options open, with 77% actively seeking new jobs or planning to do so within the next year, according to Bloomforce's "2024 EHR Salary Insights Report." The report, based on an online survey conducted between November and December 2023, gathered responses from 284 healthcare professionals across various roles, including application analysts, team leads, project managers and people managers. It explored areas such as salary, job satisfaction, work-life balance, talent retention and attitudes toward remote work. Here are some key findings from the report: [Click on the title's link to read more.]

Company resolves AI ad dispute with Texas AG Becker's Health IT; by Naomi Diaz; 9/19/24 An AI company that works with health systems has reached an agreement with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to resolve allegations that it issued inaccurate and deceptive claims regarding the reliability and safety of its products. AI health tech company Pieces Technologies' generative AI tool is capable of providing summaries of patients' conditions and treatments for hospital staff. The company works with four hospitals in Texas, according to a Sept. 18 news release. ...  Mr. Paxton's investigation concluded that these metrics were likely inaccurate and may have misled hospitals regarding the true accuracy and safety of the company's products. As part of the agreement, Pieces has committed to providing transparent and accurate information about the accuracy of its products. The company has also agreed to ensure that hospital staff using its generative AI tools for patient care are fully informed about the appropriate level of reliance on these products.

Rethinking medical records and electronic health EMR Industry - Information & Intelligence; 9/11/24 Since healthcare delivery is rapidly moving toward a more digital model, electronic health records, or EHRs, are likely to become even more important and impactful in the years to come. EHRs are the foundation for providing safe and effective care. The themes covered in this seventh edition of Healthcare Foresight are insight-driven decision making based on data platforms, developing regional EHR approaches that enable integrated care, and avoiding implementation problems. ... The phrase “electronic medical record” is becoming a bit archaic. It has been replaced by an electronic health record, or patient record, which compiles clinical data from several locations into a single, all-encompassing picture of the patient. Healthcare providers can now more easily achieve the long-aspired-for health data ideal of one patient, one record, thanks to developments in cloud computing, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence (AI). Patients moving between multiple care settings—the community, hospitals, primary care clinics, and wherever else they might receive care—should have a seamless experience thanks to the EHR. However, the possibilities are far more.

Leadership in the age of AI: At the crossroads of humanity and technology Forbes; by Dr. Adil Dalal, DBA; 9/9/24 It has only been 200 years since the First Industrial Revolution and the mass adoption of what we now call technology... The Second Industrial Revolution in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked by great progress in mass production, ... emphasizing the importance of machines over humans and managers over employees. ... Today, the world stands on the precipice of the Fourth Industrial Revolution with artificial intelligence, which is not just reshaping industries but also redefining the very essence of leadership and decision-making. ...  A technology-driven leader [TDL] who prioritizes novelty over humanity can pose significant risks, potentially leading to societal downfall. ... A human-centric leader [HCL] prioritizes the well-being, growth and empowerment of people, steering humanity toward greatness. ... So is there an ideal Technology Age leader who can lead humanity through this historical moment? Yes! ... They must embody and demonstrate the following three qualities:

Seven pillars to put healthcare consumers at the heart of the digital transformation Forbes; by Hélène Musikas, Géraldine Maouchi, Lorenzo Mandelli, Daniel Brown; 9/6/24 The digital age has seen many industries undergo a profound transformation, evolving into agile "Hybrid Organizations" that blend traditional and digital business models. ... The healthcare sector, however, faces a unique set of challenges on its journey toward this transformation. ... One of the most significant shifts in healthcare is the rising concept of "Self-Care". Seven Ways To Harmonize The Digital Landscape In Healthcare ...

Urgency to adopt AI intensifies for health IT leaders Becker's Health IT; by Naomi Diaz; 9/4/24 A Sept. 4 survey from healthcare data platform Arcadia revealed that 96% of healthcare technology leaders view the effective use of AI as crucial for gaining a competitive edge. ... The findings show that while 33% of these decision-makers see AI as essential today, that number rises sharply to 73% who believe it will be indispensable within the next five years. Despite their confidence in AI adoption, 96% of health tech leaders report feeling an increasing urgency to act, driven by pressure from data and analytics teams (82%), IT and tech departments (78%) and executive leadership (73%). However, the survey also highlights a significant challenge: 40% of leaders cite a talent shortage as a major barrier to AI implementation. This has led CIOs to place greater emphasis on skills such as data-driven decision-making (71%), data analysis, machine learning and systems integration (66%), as well as the need for roles focused on training and support for healthcare staff (59%).

How 3 health systems decide when to buy or build AIModern Healthcare; by Gabriel Perna; 8/27/24As health systems invest in artificial intelligence, executives are deciding when they should buy a vendor's AI product and when they should build their own models... “AI requires more of a data science experience, which is very expensive in the market,” Pupo said. “It also requires a lot of actual data and many hospitals do not have that or are able to afford access to large amounts of data.” Here is how three health systems are weighing their options.

Review – ‘Eternal You’: a documentary about the digital afterlife industryehospice; 8/19/24In her second blog for Part of Life, Khadiza Laskor, a third-year PhD Student at the University of Bristol’s Cyber Security Centre for Doctoral Training Programme, reviews ‘Eternal You’: a documentary about the Digital Afterlife Industry. It features companies serving the Digital Afterlife Industry which has grown with the emergence of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI): texts, audio and images generated by algorithms.

The dangers of healthcare generative AI 'drift' Becker's Health IT; by Giles Bruce; 8/15/24 IT leaders are embracing generative AI in healthcare but also expressing concerns that the technology can "drift." The performance of GPT-4, the large language model that powers ChatGPT, in answering healthcare questions can change over time, a phenomenon known as "drift," according to a study by researchers at Somerville, Mass.-based Mass General Brigham. Their work was published Aug. 8 in NEJM AI. "Generative AI performed relatively well, but more improvement is needed for most use cases," said corresponding author Sandy Aronson, executive director of IT and AI solutions at Mass General Brigham Personalized Medicine, in an Aug. 13 statement. "However, as we ran our tests repeatedly, we observed a phenomenon we deemed important: running the same test dataset repeatedly produced different results." ... The variability of the results could differ across days, so the authors say the AI's performance needs to be continuously monitored. 

A.L.S. stole his voice. A.I. retrieved it. DNYUZ, originally posted in The New York Times; 8/15/24Four years ago, Casey Harrell sang his last bedtime nursery rhyme to his daughter. By then, A.L.S. had begun laying waste to Mr. Harrell’s muscles, stealing from him one ritual after another: going on walks with his wife, holding his daughter, turning the pages of a book. “Like a night burglar,” his wife, Levana Saxon, wrote of the disease in a poem. ... Last July, doctors at the University of California, Davis, surgically implanted electrodes in Mr. Harrell’s brain to try to discern what he was trying to say. ... Yet the results surpassed expectations, the researchers reported on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, setting a new bar for implanted speech decoders and illustrating the potential power of such devices for people with speech impairments.