What’s a Digital Assistant?
Hey Siri, what’s a digital assistant? Digital assistants have been transforming the way we interact with technology in our daily lives. From asking Siri to set a reminder to requesting Alexa to play our favorite music, we've become accustomed to the convenience of having a virtual assistant at our fingertips. The potential of digital assistants extends far beyond simple commands and entertainment. In healthcare, they have the potential to revolutionize the way we access and utilize medical data. How do you know if a digital assistant can help your organization succeed?
Digital assistants are intelligent tools that help healthcare professionals utilize data from different sources in real-time, reducing the need for context switching and improving efficiency. Moreover, digital assistants can integrate with automation solutions and create actionable assistants that perform redundant tasks for users. As technology continues to advance, the future of digital assistants in healthcare is looking brighter than ever.
One of the primary benefits of digital assistants is their ability to access and interpret data from different sources. We can analyze internal health system data stored in Sharepoint files, network drives, intranet sites, and more. Additionally, using expanded availability of EHR APIs, a world of patient data can easily be accessed by a digital assistant. In the future, digital assistants will become even more sophisticated, allowing them to gather information from a wide range of sources, including medical journals, clinical decision support tools, and payer contracts. Assistants display the right information when it’s needed to help healthcare professionals make informed decisions and complete workflows with speed.
At Rotera, we talk about how health systems can use our technology to Work at Warp Speed.
So, how do you determine if adding assistants to your solution mix is right for you? Digital assistants reduce context switching to collate information you might need from a multitude of sources into a user friendly experience. Context switching occurs when healthcare professionals switch between different tasks, such as checking patient records, logging into payer portals, checking internal documents and processes, or reading emails. Context switching is time-consuming and leads to errors. Digital assistants help by consolidating tasks, information, and guided next steps into a single interface increasing employee satisfaction and overall productivity.
How could I benefit from a digital assistant? At one of our customers, our call center assistant has led to 1,200,000 minutes of reduced call time annually.
An effective digital assistant solution works alongside existing applications, allowing healthcare professionals to complete their workflows seamlessly in an intuitive single display. . For example, a call center user might keep their scheduling software open at all times, then have a side display for the assistant that performs all other common needs - checking eligibility, verifying demographics, checking referral & authorization protocol s, or finding the correct line to transfer a patient to for more complex questions. Instead of jumping between the EHR and multiple documents, websites, notepads, and applications, the user only needs the EHR and their “sidekick”.
One of the most exciting developments in the future of digital assistants in healthcare is their potential to improve patient outcomes. A few recent examples include:
Advocate Aurora Health: The health system is piloting a “digital concierge” that uses natural language processing to answer patient questions about symptoms.
Boston Children’s Hospital: The hospital is piloting an assistant that could help physicians comply with pre-surgery protocols and procedures.
It’s an exciting time for advancements in healthcare operations and patient care. While health systems are still somewhat early in their programs to deploy automations, we think they should be looking at digital assistants now. Digital assistants can often be deployed much faster than automations and tend to be much more resilient - leading to less failures or downtime. With platforms like Alyks (by Rotera), health systems can use one system to build assistants across the enterprise and reduce vendor management complications and costs.
