Generative AI Takes On Administrative Burdens

One of the most frustrating burdens on health care workers today is the drag of administrative tasks. New AI technologies that interpret and generate natural human speech (illustrated most famously in ChatGPT) can remove more of the burden of such tasks. According to Stead Burwell, co-founder and CEO of Outbound AI, a well-tuned AI agent can do many tasks at 50-80% the cost of human workers.

Unlike some industries where knowledge workers face a realistic fear of being replaced, health care workers can welcome the new AI. First, as co-founder and CTO Jonathan Wiggs says, their systems work with health care staff instead of replacing them. Second, the need for health care workers is so huge (Burwell cites 2.7 million unfilled jobs in health care, a number that’s growing) that we need AI to stretch the capabilities of existing staff.

Many companies, according to Burwell, are doing good work applying AI to clinical decision-making, so Outbound AI takes on administrative tasks, firstly billing. This can be readily appreciated by anyone who has spent time on the phone with an insurance company.

In this video, Burwell and Wiggs discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the new technologies in generative AI, and why their healthcare-focused approach works better than generic AI offerings. Wiggs sees them as part of a “stack” of technologies that work together to take on burdensome tasks.

Summarization is a valuable function that can be handled by generative AI. Wiggs points out that already, human agents have to summarize each call so that other people can pick up the thread and finish the task. Burwell says that clinical workers are also getting involved in more patient contacts, more frequently and by more staff, so summarization of interactions will be useful here, too. As Burwell says, they want to “bring real-world AI to the industry.”

Check out the interview below to learn more about generative AI from the leaders of Outbound AI.

Learn more about Outbound AI: https://outbound.ai/

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About the author

Andy Oram

Andy is a writer and editor in the computer field. His editorial projects have ranged from a legal guide covering intellectual property to a graphic novel about teenage hackers. A correspondent for Healthcare IT Today, Andy also writes often on policy issues related to the Internet and on trends affecting technical innovation and its effects on society. Print publications where his work has appeared include The Economist, Communications of the ACM, Copyright World, the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, Vanguardia Dossier, and Internet Law and Business. Conferences where he has presented talks include O'Reilly's Open Source Convention, FISL (Brazil), FOSDEM (Brussels), DebConf, and LibrePlanet. Andy participates in the Association for Computing Machinery's policy organization, named USTPC, and is on the editorial board of the Linux Professional Institute.

   

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