Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/961245
118 CIO / HEALTH IT Jonathan Bush: 'Let's give AI the decidedly unsexy job of cleaning out the administrative muck' in healthcare By Julie Spitzer T o really make headway with artifi- cial intelligence, healthcare should think smaller than "headline-grabbing moonshots," and instead, make computers tackle healthcare's most mundane tasks, ath- enahealth President, CEO and Chairman Jon- athan Bush wrote in an op-ed for the Harvard Business Review. "Excessive paperwork and red-tape is the sewage of modern medicine," he wrote, add- ing that inefficient administration results in an estimated 14 percent of wasted healthcare spending. "Let's give AI the decidedly unsexy job of cleaning out the administrative muck that's clogging up our medical organizations, sucking value out of our economy, and literal- ly making doctors ill with stress." Mr. Bush said other breakthroughs in health- care, like the first organ transplant or robotic surgery, are oen hailed as "heroic," but the most valuable advancements in healthcare tend to be more simple such as handwashing before births and C-sections. He suggested one aspect of healthcare AI could tackle is faxes, which remain a common method of communication in the industry. Some of the fax- es providers receive have nothing to do with their organization, nor do they contain any structured text, which leaves it up to staff to decipher each document — a task that takes, on average, two minutes and 30 seconds. Athenahealth, however, married machine learning with business-process outsourcing to automate the categorizing of fax- es. e solution has reduced time-per-fax for its practices to one minute and 11 seconds. "We are in the midst of a burnout crisis among U.S. physicians. ey're crushed by adminis- trative overload and feel they are becoming box-tickers rather than clinicians," Mr. Bush wrote. "Applying AI to the work that doctors detest presents a path to redemption for the health IT industry … We need to rebuild con- fidence in the promise of technology to free up provider time and enhance care delivery." Mr. Bush believes using AI to automate phy- sicians' everyday tasks could pave the way for other, bigger developments, like a cure for cancer. "Using AI to relieve scut work will allow them to focus again on what they love most and where they create the most value: the patient encounter," he wrote. n Google sets out to organize health records By Julie Spitzer G oogle's cloud business is trying to do for medical records what it does for online searches: or- ganize the many, scattered data for eas- ier access and use, according to CNBC. Google Cloud aims to help custom- ers collect and organize a plethora of medical data — ranging from lab re- sults to medical records to X-ray imag- es — into one space. Currently, much of the patient data physicians need is spread throughout various hospitals and clinics, creating information gaps that result in expensive duplicate tests and procedures. Using a new application programming interface, Google Cloud is working with industry partners to take in all of the im- portant healthcare data. Stanford (Ca- lif.) School of Medicine is one of the first enrollees in its early access program. "I see the impact that availability of data can have in medicine, and the need for it is urgent," Greg Moore, MD, PhD, Google Cloud's vice president of healthcare, told CNBC. Other tech giants are competing to help healthcare transition to the cloud, CNBC added. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure have been apart of the sector for years, and more re- cently, Apple has gotten into the game by integrating patients' EHRs with their iPhones. "Getting data to patients, caregivers and providers is key," said Dr. Moore, who previously served as Danville, Pa.- based Geisinger Health System's chief emerging technology and informatics officer. "And that's why we're so excit- ed about it." n PeaceHealth taps new CIO: 3 things to know By Anuja Vaidya V ancouver, Wash.-based PeaceHealth appointed Will Weider its permanent senior vice president and CIO, effective March 12. Here are three things to know. 1. Mr. Weider has served in the role on an interim basis since October 2017. 2. He has 20-plus years of healthcare IT leadership experience. 3. He previously served in CIO roles at numerous health organizations, including Appleton, Wis.-based Affinity Health System. n