With conscious and ethical use of Generative AI we can forge a future that is empathetic, innovative and can meet all our needs at the right time and place.

This year, HCA Healthcare and Google Cloud have expanded their partnership by exploring ways to integrate Google’s generative AI into HCA’s workflows. The most developed project under this initiative is a pilot that began in February in which HCA’s emergency department physicians are testing a voice-enabled medical dictation tool to save them time on clinical documentation.

A recent academic study of the leading LLM AI models’ ability to read and interpret clinical information demonstrates the incredible power of these tools to support healthcare, but concludes that LLMs should be used as “a supplement to existing workflows rather than as a replacement for human expertise.”

Healthcare IT companies raised $1 billion in venture capital in Q2 — down slightly from the $1.3 billion raised in Q1 but up significantly from the $451.3 million raised in Q4 2022. Unsurprisingly, a lot of these investments were made in companies offering generative AI products. Another key trend was increasing cash flow to remote patient monitoring startups, likely caused by expanded reimbursement for these services.

Over the past year, Meditech has deepened its relationship with Google Cloud by exploring ways to embed Google’s generative AI into its EHR. Some of the use cases the EHR vendor is exploring include an enhanced search and summarization tool that would present clinicians with a longitudinal view of their patient and a tool that would auto-generate clinical documentation for the hospital course summary.

A new report predicted that generative AI tools will increasingly streamline many aspects of a clinician’s day in the next five to 10 years — and that this is particularly true for tools that can automate diagnoses and respond to patients’ questions.

Regard — a startup selling an AI co-pilot that helps clinicians diagnose medical conditions — announced a new partnership to add to its technology’s capabilities. The company is teaming up with OpenAI to release new chatbot functionalities built on OpenAI’s large language model GPT-4.

Epic announced that it will integrate Abridge’s clinical documentation tool into its EHR workflow. The startup’s generative AI tool listens to visits and creates a near-instant summary that adheres to physicians’ prototypical note structure.

Generative AI further enhances the value of prompt engineering by synthesizing important insights from various interactions, including text, images, compliant transcripts, and call notes. By automating this process, generative AI quickly transforms on-the-ground insights into robust analytics.

The healthcare AI space will be an exciting one to watch over the next couple years, as investment dollars flow to startups and providers launch more AI pilots. Two of the most interesting trends to watch will be the use cases that healthcare organizations prioritize when deploying generative AI models, as well as M&A activity within the healthcare AI field, a CB Insights analyst declared during a recent webinar.

Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) penned a letter to Google leadership expressing concerns about Med-PaLM 2 — the company’s generative AI tool for healthcare providers that is currently being used by Mayo Clinic and other health systems. The letter requested that Google provide more clarity about its chatbot’s training, accuracy, ethical considerations and deployment in healthcare settings.

Amazon recently unveiled HealthScribe, an API that software companies can use to create clinical note generation apps that providers can later adopt. With this approach, Amazon is seeking to collaborate with companies that are building clinical documentation AI apps rather than compete with them. Some think this approach is clever, but others think it does little to facilitate bi-directional EHR integration and create standardization.

There are three key areas of the healthcare sector where generative AI is booming the most — in terms of both venture capital funding and the development of innovative technology — according to Anjalika Komatireddy, an analyst at CB Insights. During a recent webinar, she discussed the generative AI activity occurring in these three areas: care delivery and navigation, digital therapeutics and drug discovery.

UNC Health recently launched a pilot for its in-house generative AI app called Ava, which stands for “AI virtual assistant.” The app allows staff members to ask questions about the different digital health tools available to them across the health system, and it gives them concise answers about how to use the tools effectively. The goal is to prevent staff from searching through vast training libraries.

Renee Dua and Nick Desai —the husband-and-wife duo who founded physician house call company Heal in 2014 — have launched another healthcare startup. The company, called Together by Renee, said it is the first app to use generative AI to manage time-consuming healthcare tasks for older patients, those with chronic diseases and their stressed-out caregivers.

Google Cloud and Mayo Clinic recently announced a partnership focused on generative AI — the health system will be deploying a new HIPAA-compliant Google Cloud service called Gen App Builder. The tool enables providers to create a search system for their data, equipped with conversational features powered by Google’s large language models.

Healthcare IT companies experienced a bounceback in venture capital deal activity during Q1 of 2023. Rebecca Springer, PitchBook ’s lead healthcare analyst, said she is optimistic that healthcare IT startups will be able to keep this momentum going, especially those focused on staffing and value-based care enablement.

Hippocratic AI emerged from stealth, as well as announced $50 million in seed funding through a round co-led by General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz. The Palo Alto-based startup bills itself as the first large language model designed specifically for healthcare.

While the digital health sector might feel a little cramped in some areas, there are wide open spaces in others — and investors are ready to funnel money into companies looking to innovate these lesser-discussed aspects of care delivery and healthcare technology. Some of these areas include Medicaid, generative AI and patient-to-patient support.

Epic is welcoming generative AI’s entrance into healthcare. The company is expanding its existing collaboration with Microsoft by integrating OpenAI services, such as GPT-4, into its EHR. The partners have already begun piloting OpenAI services at a few health systems, including UC San Diego Health, UW Health and Stanford Health Care.