A new survey has concluded healthcare leaders are growing more convinced that AI can improve care outcomes, reduce costs and meet health equity goals — though generating near-term ROI from AI use still seems to be in question.
The study, the Optum Survey on Artificial Intelligence in Health Care, connected with 500 senior healthcare executives from top hospitals, health plans, life sciences companies and employers.
One key finding of the survey was that 85% of respondents said they have an AI strategy in place and that 48% have implemented their strategy. All told, 98% of healthcare organizations that responded either had an AI strategy in place or were planning one.
When asked which areas they could use AI to improve patient outcomes, the top three categories included virtual patient care (41%), diagnosis and predicting outcomes (40%) and medical image interpretation (36%).
Despite all of these positive feelings about the future of AI in their organizations, however, health leaders’ belief that AI can save money has fallen back of late. Just 42% of health leaders said they expect to see a return on their AI investment within the next three years, down from 59% just a year ago.
Instead, 31% expect to see a return in four or five years (up from 19% last year), while 27% don’t expect to see savings for more than five years (up from 18%). Ninety-nine percent of respondents expect to see tangible cost savings at some unspecified point.
To succeed with AI, respondents said, they need a specific kind of partner. Eighty-nine percent of respondents said that the challenges of using AI in healthcare call for partnering with a health services company with expertise in data and analytics.
In addition to improving patient outcomes, 72% of healthcare leaders said that they trusted AI to support nonclinical administrative processes which would otherwise take away time clinicians spend with patients. A subset (39%) said that AI offers particular opportunities to ease administrative burdens, including automating administrative workflows.
Meanwhile, respondents were optimistic that AI technology will create jobs (55%) rather than reduce job opportunities (45%).
Also, many see AI as a tool for improving health equity in their organization. In fact, 96% of respondents said that AI plays an important role in their organization’s efforts to reach their equity goals, and nearly all respondents said their company can take steps that would mitigate bias in AI. This would include investing in bias mitigation tools, formal compliance programs that assess bias and formal responsible use of AI programs.
As an aside, it’s interesting to note that a KMPG survey published early this year found that at least some healthcare leaders aren’t comfortable with the speed at which AI technology is being put in place.
According to the survey, 67% of healthcare business leaders reported that AI was at least moderately functional in their organizations. Unfortunately, given the demands of the pandemic, much of this technology has been put in place at a particularly high rate of speed, according to KMPG’s head of artificial intelligence Traci Gusher. This has created a phenomenon Gusher calls “COVID-19 whiplash,” in which business leaders feel that such adoption is moving so quickly that they’re losing control.
