Agentic AI is a scorching subject throughout quite a few industries together with healthcare. Everybody appears to be buzzing about AGI, envisioning Jarvis from Iron Man the place AI techniques are able to human-level intelligence and decision-making capabilities.
The joy is comprehensible – abruptly there’s a actual alternative to construct fashions and robots that mimic human duties and might work together and have interaction with people. Companies are passionate about this functionality, particularly in industries with labor shortages to switch human employees with AI machines who can automate duties extra effectively, with out errors or monetary compensation.
However relating to healthcare, I feel we have to take a minute to evaluate at a deeper degree. Usually, healthcare is a extremely regulated business for good purpose and can’t tackle a few of the dangers and failures inherent with AI that different industries can. We have to consider agentic AI by means of the particular lens of the healthcare business and its workflows, evaluating the wants of suppliers, healthcare organizations in addition to sufferers, recognizing that healthcare just isn’t monolithic and may have workflows which can be extra acceptable than others for implementing AI.
To grasp this requires being trustworthy in regards to the strengths and weaknesses of agentic AI. LLMs excel at inventive processes – for instance, ChatGPT can immediately create a brand new tune about Taylor Swift’s newest album within the fashion of Dr. Seuss with minimal prompts. Comparatively, rules-based engines are good at structured output. Contemplate a immediate for a self-driving automobile: “When a visitors mild is crimson, THEN cease.” What’s fascinating about agentic AI is that it’s going to doubtless fall someplace within the center – partly rules-based and partly inventive, and navigating that center floor and the suitable threat and reward of when it must be utilized in healthcare workflows is the massive problem.
Probably the most helpful heuristic I’ve discovered on this subject is wanting on the idea of threat versus consequence. I outline threat as the proportion that one thing would fail and consequence as the end result of that failure.
In eventualities the place workflow dangers are excessive, you don’t need the agentic course of to personal it – the fact is that each AI mannequin will fail sooner or later and the price of that failure might be too excessive relating to healthcare outcomes.
Listed below are two examples the place agentic workflows wouldn’t work:
- Authoring or defining superior directives (end-of-life planning). There’s clearly a inventive and interpretive workflow right here that requires empathy, human expertise, and judgement on when to information vs. when to hear; as a result of the supply of data (individuals and their conditions) usually are not all equal. It’s additionally a scenario with excessive penalties that you just don’t wish to get incorrect in any manner form or type.
- Managing triage in an ER — a chaotic, fast-moving setting. Individuals are greatest suited to make fast choices — there’s no time to enter knowledge into an agent.
Nevertheless, listed below are two examples of the place agentic AI would work in healthcare:
- Unlocking EHR knowledge utilizing an agent to automate a sequence of duties that require it to navigate a person interface. Enterprise degree software program has carried out this earlier than. It was referred to as RPA or Robotic Course of Automation, however now agent-powered processes can do that with way more resilience.
- Reviewing affected person charts to verify emergent power circumstances weren’t missed by clinicians.
Proper now, I feel agentic AI is at a stage the place it would fail if it begins telling medical doctors what to do and takes over resolution making — and worse, damage the belief of everybody (by its affiliation) with synthetic intelligence in medication. When affected person security, empathy and human judgment take priority over price financial savings and potential effectivity enhancements, a human have to be within the loop. However automating duties, observe taking, extracting knowledge — the tedious, guide processes in healthcare that don’t require human intervention in each step — is a superb place to start implementing AI. The healthcare business must be how AI can discover and current related knowledge with context to allow human clinicians to make knowledgeable choices, liberating up suppliers’ time to cut back burnout and permit them to supply extra customized affected person care to enhance affected person outcomes.
Photograph: filo, Getty Pictures
Isaac Park spent his youth tinkering with expertise and in highschool, began his formal schooling in software program growth. After shifting to Durham, North Carolina, he graduated from Duke College with a Bachelor of Science diploma in Laptop Science. Isaac started his expertise profession instantly, working as a software program developer, constructing front-end frameworks. Afterwards, he moved right into a product administration position, guiding stakeholders and technical groups by means of all kinds of tasks from inception to ultimate launch.
In 2009, he co-founded an innovation and product studio, Pathos Ethos, and guided startups and company innovation groups by means of business-changing digital merchandise within the healthcare and protection verticals: all the best way from releasing a multi-million greenback software program product, to constructing a local cellular utility utilized by over 1M customers concurrently. On the finish of 2022, he exited Pathos Ethos and joined the Duke Pratt Faculty of Engineering, serving as school for the Christensen Household Heart for Innovation in Product Administration and Innovation. In 2023, he co-founded an AI-Native healthcare expertise firm, Keebler Well being, and at the moment serves because the CEO.
This put up seems by means of the MedCity Influencers program. Anybody can publish their perspective on enterprise and innovation in healthcare on MedCity Information by means of MedCity Influencers. Click on right here to learn how.
