The Business Value of AI for Healthcare Providers

The healthcare industry continues to adopt Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies and practices to improve patient outcomes in more equitable, affordable ways. Those who have already made the leap are seeing some incredible results quickening the pace of adoption. 

According to the fourth annual Optum Survey on AI in Health Care, surveying 500 senior healthcare executives, 98% of the health care leaders say their organization has or is planning to implement an AI strategy. 

“This year’s survey findings continue to validate how the responsible use of AI can help health systems strengthen and scale essential functions and reduce administrative burdens, all of which helps clinicians focus on their core mission of patient care,” said Rick Hardy, Optum’s chief executive officer said in a press release. The strong belief among respondents is that AI can improve many areas, including supporting non-clinical, administrative processes that take away from time caring for patients (72%), reaching equity goals (96%), creating new work opportunities (55%), and generating tangible cost savings (99%). The ultimate culmination being better patient outcomes.

Although 98% of the executives surveyed plan to implement an AI strategy, only 48% have already. The overwhelming majority report being interested in partnering with others who are just as focused on the responsible use of AI. Those partnerships will give the healthcare companies access to expert resources and the ability to run projects without starting from the ground floor. Finding the right partner, one who aligns with goals and their budget, is the next step for those still looking to begin or those looking to expand.

Responsible AI: De-biased & Explainable AI Results to Drive More Healthcare Equity

The bias in our healthcare system has been highlighted over the past couple of years like never before. You just have to look at the maternal mortality rates between black women and their white counterparts or monitoring and diagnosing the risk of heart disease between men and women. The good news is nearly 99% of the healthcare leaders surveyed believe they can help mitigate bias in AI by investing in tools that help identify bias, compliance processes, and responsible use. 

Selecting a tool that includes explainable results (Squark uses Nobel Prize-winning math) and bias-tracking reports will be crucial to achieving these goals. Squark’s results include reports highlighting the data that has the biggest impact on the results – at both the summary level (columns) and for the values (in each row). With Squark, you can be confident in the results and understand why the machine has learned any outliers across the variables in your data and all the values.

Proven Success of Using AutoML to Identify Patients with Squark

Squark is already working with leaders to utilize AI in the healthcare provider space. For example, one client, UPMC, is using Squark to identify patients within niche specialties to “deliver the care at the right time and the right place to the right person in most effective way possible.” Using Squark’s automated machine learning (AutoML) and their database of 1,500 variables per individual, they identified those most in need of their services. As a result, their marketing outreach went from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 74. After the initial program’s success, they are now rolling it out to other specialties with strong support from the executive leadership.

Accurate, Actionable AI Results – in Minutes. See Results on Your Investment in Months, Not Years.

While 99% of those surveyed expect tangible savings as a result of investing in AI, only 42% of those who have an immediate strategy expect to see a return in the next three years. That belief in a delayed return has slowed the pace of their investments. That doesn’t have to be the case, though. 

While some tools and solutions are costly and target data scientists, limiting their use and prolonging timelines, those aren’t the only options. Squark’s solution was built to be a cost-effective option that democratizes data science’s power and predictive capabilities. That is precisely the reason UPMC chose Squark as their solution. Squark was able to reproduce results in one day that would have taken their internal team six months while still being HIPPA compliant. Additionally, now that the Marketing Intelligence team has done the initial setup, anyone with a basic understanding of statistics can run their own projects.

Read more in our Case Study.

Success with AI is Right at Your Fingertips

Squark identifies tomorrow’s healthcare needs today, so your patients get the treatment they need before it is too late.  No longer is it necessary to hire specialized staff and wait months or longer to get valid predictions that can improve patient outcomes.   Squark’s no-code AI solution is a proven capability for healthcare provider systems to identify who will respond to clinical medical marketing programs.  Hospitals continue to choose Squark because it:

• Easy to Apply
• Improves patient and business outcomes
• Faster Time to Value
• Requires no PHI
• Requires no specialized team to deliver results

Squark delivers a capability that is otherwise unavailable in healthcare today.  The power of AI instantly applied to your data to generate actionable insights creates revenue and helps improve lives.  Reach out today to find out how quickly and easily Squark can be up and running on your data.