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.

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.

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.

NYU researchers conducted a study this year in which nearly 400 people were asked to identify whether responses to patient questions were produced by human providers or ChatGPT. Participants had a limited ability to tell the source of the responses apart, so the study authors concluded that the use of LLMs like ChatGPT could be an effective way to streamline healthcare providers’ communication with patients.

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.

Iodine Software recently announced that it is expanding its relationship with OpenAI. By doing so, Iodine will integrate the latest GPT-4 language model into its existing AI technologies and datasets, specifically its AwareCDI product suite.

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.

Many experts think technology will help mitigate healthcare’s burnout crisis and workforce shortage, but the healthcare industry still has a lot to figure out when it comes to choosing which tools to deploy and getting its workers on board with these new tools, according to a new report from GE HealthCare.

The use of LLMs in healthcare is still incredibly nascent, so many experts are calling for a safety framework to make this uncharted territory feel safer. There are still a lot of unknowns, but avoiding clinical use cases and not inputting patients’ health information seem to be the most important guardrails providers are putting around LLMs at the moment.

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.

The use of LLMs in healthcare is still quite new, so health systems want to deploy these tools in the least risky way possible. A panel of experts explained how they think health systems can do this during MedCity’s INVEST conference — some of their advice included starting with deployment in nonclinical settings and partnering with incumbent vendors rather than startups.