4 Ways Clinical AI Will Transform Healthcare in 2021

The past year has pushed the U.S. healthcare system to its limits. Hospitals filled up with COVID-19 patients, putting elective procedures and in-person visits on hold, and more than 14.6 million Americans lost their employer-sponsored health insurance.

However, the pandemic has also shown how resilient health systems can be, adapting to new technologies on the fly to continue serving patients through this disruptive time. Although telehealth is often discussed as the star technology of the COVID-19 pandemic, clinical artificial intelligence (AI) also had a watershed year.

A recent survey found 56 percent of healthcare executives accelerated their AI deployment plans in response to the pandemic. Similarly, in an Intel survey the proportion of health IT decision-makers that had deployed, or were planning to deploy AI, jumped from 45 percent early in 2020 to 84 percent after the pandemic hit. There are several reasons for this increased adoption.

AI has helped hospitals manage capacity, triage CO-19 patients, and target outreach to vulnerable patients and populations to prevent avoidable hospitalizations. Importantly, AI has also eased clinicians’ administrative burden, which worsens burnout among doctors and nurses already pushed to the brink by the pandemicand costs the US $4.6 billion annually.