Many artificial intelligence tools in the senior living space are being deployed to assist with resident engagement, but some healthcare companies are exploring its use as an administrative tool as well.
UNC Health is piloting an internal chatbot designed to be used by care team members to access reference materials and documents.
The company rolled out the chatbot this month, testing it with a small group of clinicians and administrators, UNC Health announced this week.
By asking the AI targeted questions, staffers will be able to access documents they otherwise would have had to spend time searching for, UNC Health stated.
The goal of the pilot program — a partnership with healthcare software giant Epic Systems – is to identify various uses for the AI, before it is released more broadly to the UNC Health team, said David McSwain, MD, UNC Health’s Chief Medical Informatics Officer.
“This is just one example of an innovative way to use this technology so that teammates can spend more time with patients and less time in front of a computer,” McSwain said in a statement.
In addition to accessing admin materials, other ways AI is being deployed for long-term care operations include a recent tool from iQueue Autopilot to assist with billing and scheduling.
The UN program is powered by Azure OpenAI’s large language model; Epic has been continuously working on incorporating the Azure OpenAI system into its healthcare software, the company said earlier this year.
Crucially, the goal is not to replace clinicians, or override their judgment, but rather to save time and ease administrative burdens, a UNC Health spokesman said recently.
Epic also announced this week it was incorporating GPT technology, DAX Express, that can be used by clinicians to automatically draft notes on patient visits or telehealth meetings.
