What is Missing From Healthcare AI Efforts? User Centricity
At ThetaRho, we strive to provide a non-obvious but informed perspective on the challenges and opportunities for AI in healthcare. We believe that the end-user perspective is underrepresented in the current discourse regarding AI in healthcare. The idea of using AI to transform healthcare is not new. History is littered with well-funded entities placing large bets on AI in healthcare. However, impact, especially macro-measurable impact, remains elusive, especially for users of these technologies. The unfortunate reality is that the lived experience of almost all healthcare professionals is a far cry from the AI-promised utopia.
At this point, there is sufficient evidence to indicate that technologies designed to improve healthcare, especially EHR technology, have increased the workload of users, not reduced it. Indeed, physicians are experiencing record levels of professional discontent and burnout at unprecedented rates partly because of the unfulfilled promises of EHR technology.
In theory, AI can improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery, but we must first consider what it will take to improve user experience. As Thomas Edison famously said, “Vision without execution is just hallucination.” And he was not commenting on GenAI or LLMs.
There are many reasons to believe that the GenAI revolution fundamentally differs from previous innovation waves. Every day, these technologies demonstrate capabilities that were thought impossible only a few years ago. Not to mention the investments made by enterprises large and small. However, the complexity of AI implementations, particularly with GenAI, creates unique challenges for adoption by highly trained physicians.
Current GenAI is akin to the jet engine in that it will eventually fundamentally alter the world. However, jet engines are ineffective when operating alone. You must build planes with controls to tame these jet engines, and airlines must purchase planes to transport people from one location to another. Similarly, these powerful GenAI need to be embedded in larger applications with controls and provide compelling user experiences to be useful.
To be fair, we have tried. However, the story of AI in healthcare is a tale of two cities: Clinical AI, which has received a lot of attention and investment, and Administrative AI, which has received relatively little attention. In both cases, the user experience is frequently an afterthought.
