It’s Good to Be Right

We have more than a few mantras here at 4sight Health coined by founder and CEO David W. Johnson. One is that healthcare will change more in the next five years than it has in the past 100 years. Another is that artificial intelligence won’t replace doctors, but doctors who know how to use AI will replace doctors who don’t.

One of my mantras is that we practice evidenced-based thought leadership here at 4sight Health. We have strong opinions about the U.S. healthcare system and what it will take to build a better one that works for consumers, not legacy incumbent industry sectors. We back up those strong opinions with facts. We’re not just making things up to be edgy or controversial. And we believe what we say.

All of those mantras came alive in a new study on the use of AI by hospitalists. Four researchers affiliated with Emory University and Grady Memorial Hospital, both in Atlanta, wanted to know if and how doctors were using AI in their daily clinical work. They published the results of the study last week in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

The study is based on an anonymous survey of 54 hospitalists working at a large urban academic tertiary care hospital, presumably Grady. The hospitalists included physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants. The researchers’ hypothesis was that younger and less experienced hospitalists were using AI, albeit infrequently, more than older and more experienced hospitalists. The researchers were wrong.

“No significant differences in AI usage were observed across shift type, years of practice, time allocation to hospitalist duties, sex, age or provider designation, contrary to our hypothesis,” the researcher said.

Here’s what they did find:

• Thirty-six of the 54 respondents, or two-thirds, said they used AI in their clinical practice.
• OpenEvidence, the medical information platform, was the preferred AI tool, used by 28 of the 54 respondents.
• The three most common uses of AI were: answering miscellaneous clinical questions, generating differential diagnoses and determining treatment options.
• The least common use of AI was generating patient education materials.

All that led the researchers to conclude: “AI is predominantly used as a supplementary decision support tool, with a preference for a medical-specific platform.”

However, the surveyed hospitalists did so pretty much on their own without any institutional protocols, rules, processes or procedures from the hospital or the medical staff.

To wit, the researchers said, “Healthcare institutions must develop governance frameworks, validation protocols and educational initiatives to ensure safe and effective AI deployment in clinical practice.”

In other words, the hospitalists weren’t waiting for management to tell them how to use AI in their daily clinical work. They did it on their own to improve their own medical competencies and skill sets with the objective of achieving the best clinical outcomes for their patients.

For me, the study results showed that healthcare will change more in the next five years than in the past 100 years, that doctors who know how to use AI will replace doctors who don’t and that we’re not just shooting our mouths off when we say those two things.

It’s good to be right. Now let’s build a better healthcare system.