Latest news with #clinicalcare
Forbes
6 days ago
- Health
- Forbes
The AI Will See You Now: Clinical Care Agents At Your Service
Insight app. Going to the doctor is a tedious experience at best—and a traumatizing one at worst—so unpleasant that many people avoid it altogether, until an emergency or crisis occurs. The reality is all too familiar for most Americans who can expect to wait weeks or months for an appointment, sit in the waiting room for hours before seeing a provider, fill out redundant medical questionnaires, and then have a rushed interaction with a busy nurse or doctor who barely listens to your health concerns. Meanwhile, the administrative burdens surrounding clinical care have led to provider burnout and workforce shortages within the medical profession. As reported in Harvard Business Review, U.S. physicians spend 34% to 55% of their workday on documentation and EHR reviews—cutting into face time with patients and weakening the patient-provider relationship. I spoke with the team at Insight Health, a startup that has raised $4.6 million in seed funding from investors including Kindred Ventures, RTP Global, Wedbush Ventures and MKT1, to alleviate the routine aspects of care across the patient journey—screening, intake, documentation, and follow-up—using AI clinical care agents. Insight Health founding team - Jaimal Soni (Chief Executive Officer), Dr. Pankaj Gore, Dr. Eric ... More Stecker (Chief Medical Officer), Saran Siva, (President) 'I don't think the problem can be overstated,' shared Dr. Eric Stecker, who is a co-founder and the Chief Medical Officer. 'Practicing physicians often feel like we're banging our heads against the wall, trying to fix a broken system.' And for our clients at Insight Health, the screening or intake process is a real pain point, elaborated co-founder and CEO Jaimal Soni. A typical neurosurgery visit could be 30 to 40 minutes, with half of that time spent capturing a patient's history, including family, medical and surgical history. And the clinicians often run out of time. Since its founding in 2023, Insight Health has conducted over 100,000 autonomous clinical conversations with patients, deploying its agents to support thousands of clinicians mostly at mid-sized private practices and community hospitals but also at large institutions across various specialities, including Neurosurgery, Oncology, Gastroenterology, and Primary Care. How Does The AI Platform Work ? I was able to visit Insight Health's office in New York City for a live demo, and chat with their AI agent 'Lumi' during a screening process via phone call. Lumi has a number of modules, or workflows which can be personalized and leveraged by clinicians to engage directly with the patient, and also speaks multiple languages. First, it integrates with a practice's EHR and referral notes, to extract relevant data about the patient (i.e., the details from the patient's last clinic visit or last annual checkup). Then, it reaches out to the patient over email, text or phone for a screening visit, in order to gather an updated patient history. Following the screening, Lumi generates a structured clinical summary for the provider to review before the in-person visit. Additional workflows support appointment scheduling, in-office visit summaries via an AI scribe and post-visit feedback collection. The accuracy of the audio-to-written transcription which was generated during the Q&A phone screening process, was noteworthy, but I wondered what would happen when a patient went 'off-script'. Dr. Stecker shared that 'with generative AI, we can program it to provide clarification, to identify inconsistencies within a patient's medical history and to explain basic medical terms, but not give medical advice.' Are Patients Willing To Share Health Data With AI? A key consideration, particularly with older patients, is whether they would be comfortable speaking to an AI about sensitive health information. Dr. Stecker remarked, 'I've been surprised by how well the technology has been received. One patient spent a long time interacting with the AI, sharing detailed information about their pain and medical history — you could tell they really needed someone to talk to.' Pre-visit summary Research has shown that people like sharing personal details when the AI is relatable and empathetic.1 A recent study in ScienceDirect showed that 'individuals were just as likely to choose to self-disclose to an AI as to a human researcher'.2 And this study built on previous research that found that self-disclosure to chatbots, text or voice based AI agents who engage in naturalistic simulated conversations,3 evokes similar emotional and psychological satisfaction compared to human-human interactions.4 But Is It Safe? Insight Health is HIPAA and SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and protects PHI, or personal health information consistent with industry standards, however Soni noted that in the US, the regulatory body around AI for healthcare just doesn't exist yet. The current administration has unwound certain HHS policy efforts that were put in motion by former President Biden. For example, Executive Order 14110: Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence was signed into law by former President Biden in October 2023, establishing standards for AI use in healthcare and other industries. But, the order was rescinded by President Trump on January 20, 2025. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act which was signed into law July 4, 2025 did leave out certain 'moratorium' provisions that would have prohibited nearly all state and local regulation of AI. Meaning, if we do see guardrails placed around artificial intelligence in healthcare, it will likely be through state and locally mandated requirements. So in lieu of an established regulatory infrastructure, Insight Health has built an internal safety framework called 'Safe AI' to quantitatively measure the quality of outputs, identify outliers and escalate issues to clinicians. Essentially, the platform processes every transcript to verify accuracy and look for anomaly detection prior to generating a medical summary. 'We found patients may contradict themselves (i.e., a patient says they are on a diabetes medication but did not mention they are a diabetic) and we highlight this in a note for the clinician,' Soni says. Will AI Replace Doctors? As the article title suggests, an obvious question remains – are AI providers going to be replacing doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers? Dr. Stecker made a distinction between what Insight Health is doing, in supporting or aiding the practice of medicine, and 'making recommendations, giving a diagnosis and prescribing a treatment plan' which is 'getting into the practice of medicine.' But the reality is, this is a slippery slope. 'The lines are blurring as the systems get better,' said Kanyi Maqubela of Kindred Ventures, one of Insight Health's seed investors. A recent study completed by Cedars-Sinai, Tel Aviv University found that startup K Health's AI physician assistant matched doctors' clinical decisions in two-thirds of patient cases, while offering better care in the remaining third. The research also found that the AI made potentially harmful recommendations 2.8% of the time, versus physicians' 4.6%.5 As might be expected, the AI 'was better at following guidelines but wasn't as good where there was nuance.' Dr. Caroline Goldzweig, Chief Medical Officer at Cedars-Sinai elaborated in an interview with Forbes, 'With complex patients with a lot of comorbidities, that's where you really do need human intervention.' Maqubela shared that ultimately the patient still wants expert advice coming from physicians and providers, so the challenge is leveraging AI to create 'a wrap-around experience for the human expert, so humans can just do the things that are unique to the patient and everything else can be optimized by AI.' Perhaps we will soon see AI replacing providers when the case is straightforward and without complication. But for now, platforms like K Health and Insight Health position their respective platforms not as replacements, but as critical tools to support physicians, nurses and other providers with routine tasks, to free them up to provide more higher-level and high touch support to patients. What's The Future Of AI In Care Delivery ? Maqubela shared his broad vision for the future of AI in the care delivery space, and furthermore, what gave his venture firm conviction in Insight Health's strategy. Healthcare 'has historically been a laggard in all software.' But, AI is different. 'We're seeing massive adoption, as the technology can take large volumes of unstructured, multimodal data (including labs and diagnostic images and complex family history), give probabilistic responses, produce summarization, and do robocalling that is personable.' There is incredible market-fit with healthcare in AI that has surprised a lot of folks. 'And we're just in the first inning.' In phase two, we're evolving beyond scribes and summarizations, and more towards dynamic and robust agents 'that can move from the EHR into the diagnostic, into the LLM, into the voice application, back into the EHR, with the right supervisory systems on top of them.' And Insight Health's founding team includes deep specialists in Cardiology and Neurology (Dr. Eric Stecker and Dr. Pankaj Gore) which Maqubela believes will be critical in training future agents.
BBC News
21-07-2025
- Health
- BBC News
New clinical care unit 'will not open any time soon'
A new clinical care unit at Guernsey's Princess Elizabeth Hospital "will not open any time soon", the island's top civil servant has June, the BBC revealed the opening of the unit had been the project, which made up phase one of the hospital modernisation project, was scheduled to be completed by autumn 2024. States of Guernsey chief executive Boley Smillie said: "There are issues that need to be resolved, issues I cannot talk about unfortunately." The BBC understands problems with the installation of new ventilation units and the placement of some walls have caused some of the delays. Health and Social Care President George Oswald said during the last political term there was no political oversight of the project. Mr Smillie admitted the States needed to be more transparent, but said commercial relationships sometimes got in the way of that: "There is always reasons why we have to deal with things behind the scenes."But you know there's no hiding from the fact that we've got to do better on some of these projects." In a speech to a local think tank Mr Smillie, who has been in post since January, said the States struggled with accountability. "When it comes to large projects, accountability starts to dilute."Some people are stretched across too many projects, we need people to be focused on delivering outcomes and that works very well in some areas, in some areas we have got to hold our hands up so we can do better."Despite the problems, he focussed on recent successes, when it came to delivering big projects. "The Liberation Day celebration took a lot of organisation. "The election whilst people talk about the results and whether island-wide voting is a good thing or a bad thing, actually the operation of the election was brilliantly run by officers."We were declaring results much earlier than anyone would have expected of us, so there's lots to be proud of and lots to be positive about. "What we have got to do better on those large-scale projects is be more outcome-focused we have got to make sure that accountability and responsibility is clear, as it is not as clear as it could be."
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Summit Health Advisors Receives $98,000 Grant to Enhance Pharmacist Reimbursement Models
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., June 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Summit Health Advisors, LLC has been awarded a $98,000 grant from the NCPDP Foundation to explore and develop innovative business models for reimbursing pharmacists for clinical care services. The project will focus on community settings, where pharmacists can play a crucial role in providing direct patient care, especially in rural areas facing a shortage of primary care physicians. By analyzing existing business models and NCPDP standards, the team will develop comprehensive reimbursement strategies that empower pharmacists and improve healthcare outcomes. "A viable business model that supports pharmacists practicing at the top of their license isn't just about expanding scope — it's about preserving the role of pharmacies as trusted, accessible healthcare touchpoints in communities across the country. Maintaining face-to-face connections matters in an increasingly digital world," said Seth Joseph, Managing Director of Summit Health Advisors. "We're grateful to the NCPDP Foundation for supporting this work. We're proud to partner with Point-of-Care Partners, whose deep understanding of the pharmacy landscape and strong relationships throughout the industry are key reasons we're confident this project will deliver insights that can lead to real, lasting and positive change." The project is set to be completed within 12 months, with key milestones including a comprehensive literature review, expert interviews, and the publication of a white paper. John W. Hill, MBAHCM, Executive Director of the NCPDP Foundation, added, "We are thrilled to support Summit Health Advisors in their innovative project to enhance pharmacist reimbursement models. We believe this project will have a profound impact on the healthcare ecosystem, and we are excited to see the positive outcomes it will bring." This grant was made possible through the NCPDP Foundation General Grant Fund. The project aligns with one of the NCPDP Foundation's strategic initiatives: expanding the role and value of the pharmacist. About the NCPDP Foundation The NCPDP Foundation collaborates with organizations and individuals to support research initiatives that improve data sharing throughout the healthcare ecosystem, removing obstacles to quality care for patients, with a focus on pharmacy interoperability. The NCPDP Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE NCPDP Foundation
CBC
20-05-2025
- Health
- CBC
Foothills Country Hospice
Foothills Country Hospice south of Calgary is doubling its capacity. The hospice is surrounded by forests and provides clinical care at no cost.
