Artificial Intelligence

Battling with chronic life-limiting illness results in extreme pain, discomfort, and physical as well as mental stress. Even when there is no permanent cure available to treat the disease, palliative care can bring some respite to the patients. It can make a significant difference in enhancing end-of-life care quality by alleviating pain and managing uncomfortable symptoms. 

Regardless of the benefits, most people either never receive palliative care or receive it at the very end when their disease has escalated to the last stage. Needless to say, there’s no easy way to discuss end-of-life care, and there’s no easy way for patients and their caregivers to make decisions related to it. What can evolving healthcare do to dissipate this cloud of chaos and discover a more data-driven, intelligent way to help patients enhance the quality of their life?  

[Read more…] about The AI Advantage: How to Improve Palliative Care in A Value-based World

Once while I was scrolling through the news feed on my phone, there was one specific line that really made me wonder: “There’s a 40% chance of gusty and blustery winds today.” Statements such as this one strongly influence people’s behavior, as they are based on evidence or data findings from years of surveying, studying, and analyzing past trends and occurrences.

However, my question is “Why are we not able to make such claims in healthcare- even today?” 

Can we predict the vulnerabilities a patient might face in the future or the current health risks a population segment faces? 

Is risk scoring the answer we have been looking for?

Almost all kinds of care organizations have some risk scoring methodology to target care interventions. With quality, costs, and patient experience taking the center stage in healthcare, care organizations need to stratify patients based on their need for immediate intervention. 

The need of the hour is to address high-risk issues that impact large groups of patients and ensure that these needs are met in a timely fashion. Often, frequent fliers among high-risk patients come into the emergency department as if it’s their second home.

[Read more…] about Artificial Intelligence: The Turning Point for Rising Healthcare Costs