How Generative AI is Influencing Healthcare Industry: IBM and Google's Strategic Leadership

This News Covers

• What is Generative AI’s role in healthcare in 2023?
• How Google is Influencing AI’s role in Healthcare
• How IBM's Strides in Healthcare Are Developing
• List of Healthcare Products Powered by Generative AI

Generative AI, powered by large language models (LLMs), is a transformative technology that can create diverse content, from text to images, videos, audio, and 3D models. Its ability to generate new and unstructured outputs sets it apart from traditional AI forms. In healthcare, this technology holds immense potential for automating and enhancing manual processes, improving customer experience, and boosting employee productivity.

What is Generative AI’s role in healthcare in 2023?

Generative AI is poised to revolutionize healthcare by addressing various challenges faced by the industry. From drug discovery to patient care, the technology offers solutions that can enhance the quality of care and improve patient outcomes. However, the adoption of generative AI in healthcare comes with challenges, including data privacy concerns, the need for transparency, and the continuous evolution of medical knowledge. As the technology continues to evolve, it is crucial for stakeholders to address these challenges to harness the full potential of generative AI in healthcare.

Google's Generative AI Initiatives

Google is expanding the access of its large language models to healthcare customers. The company is developing a healthcare-specific large language model called Med-PaLM 2, aiming to provide more accurate answers to medical questions. Google's Vertex AI software suite allows healthcare systems like HCA to build and deploy machine learning models tailored for specific use cases. Google's recent AI solutions in healthcare are geared towards solving specific problems, such as reading and labeling medical images or speeding up prior authorization.

Generative AI is transforming healthcare by enabling the creation of new drugs, improving patient care, and enhancing medical research. The technology can help in the early detection of diseases, optimize treatment plans, and even predict patient outcomes. The integration of AI in healthcare can lead to a reduction in costs and improved patient experiences.

Google aims to compete with Amazon and Microsoft in the healthcare AI landscape. Generative AI models, like Google's PaLM, are good at summarizing and organizing data, making them suitable for applications like patient handoff in hospitals. Google's Med-PaLM 2 is one of the models being tested for accuracy and outcomes in healthcare settings. The challenges for generative AI in healthcare include data privacy concerns, the need for transparency, and the constant evolution of medical knowledge.

How Google is Influencing AI’s role in Healthcare?

Google has been actively involved in the Healthcare AI sector, and their initiatives span across various domains. Here's a brief overview of their role in Healthcare AI:

Expanding Access to Large Language Models in Healthcare

Google is making its large language models available to healthcare customers. These models are adept at summarizing and organizing vast amounts of data, making them particularly useful in the healthcare domain.

Development of Healthcare-Specific AI Models

Google is working on a healthcare-specific large language model called Med-PaLM 2. This model is designed to provide more accurate and relevant answers to medical queries.

Partnerships and Collaborations

Google has collaborated with HCA, one of the largest healthcare systems in the US. Together, they are exploring the potential of generative AI in improving patient handoff processes in hospitals. Google's Vertex AI software suite allows healthcare organizations to build and deploy machine learning models tailored to their specific needs.

Infrastructure and Software Upgrades

Google's Vertex AI is a software suite that aids customers in building and deploying machine learning models. The platform is model agnostic, meaning it can support various models, including Google's PaLM, OpenAI's GPT-4, and others.

Investments in Healthcare AI

Google has been investing in developing AI solutions that address specific challenges in the healthcare sector. For instance, they have released AI tools to assist healthcare organizations in reading, storing, and labeling medical images. They have also introduced AI tools to expedite the prior authorization process for health insurers.

Competing in the Healthcare AI Landscape

Google is in competition with other tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft in the healthcare AI domain. Each company is striving to make significant inroads into the sector, and it remains to be seen which will emerge as the dominant player.

It's evident that Google is making concerted efforts to establish a strong foothold in the Healthcare AI sector through its innovative solutions, partnerships, and investments.

How IBM's Strides in Healthcare Are Developing?

IBM has been making significant strides in the realm of Healthcare AI. Here's a summary of their recent endeavors and contributions:

AI's Impact on Healthcare:

IBM's Watson Health is leveraging AI to assist government health and human service agencies. They are using AI to help citizens connect with essential services and protect Medicaid resources. It has introduced the Citizen Engagement platform, which provides citizens with an AI-infused virtual assistant. This assistant is trained in conversational AI to understand natural language, enabling citizens to ask questions and receive easy-to-understand answers. It also pre-screens for benefit programs, ensuring citizens get the information they need. IBM's Policy Insights with Watson is designed to help program integrity investigators improve their work efficiency. This AI-powered solution uses natural language processing to streamline policy analysis and scale policy knowledge. It aids in fraud, waste, and abuse detection and prevention.

Watson Care Manager is another offering from IBM. It's a configurable, HIPAA-enabled platform that uses AI to highlight key information, enabling caseworkers to quickly uncover necessary details. It sifts through unstructured text to extract concepts, worry words, protective factors, and other filters from large and complex case files, making the search process more efficient for caseworkers.

Benefits of AI in Healthcare

The AI healthcare market, which was valued at $11 billion in 2021, is projected to reach $187 billion by 2030. AI and ML technologies can sift through vast amounts of health data, analyzing it much faster than humans. AI is being used to improve healthcare operations efficiency, from administrative tasks to patient care. This includes streamlining administrative workflows, introducing virtual nursing assistants, reducing dosage errors, enabling safer surgeries, and preventing fraud. AI technologies, such as natural language processing, predictive analytics, and speech recognition, are being used to improve communication between patients and providers, leading to better patient experiences and outcomes.

IBM's Vision for Healthcare

IBM is driving transformation in the healthcare industry by adopting a smarter architecture, modernizing core systems, and scaling data value. They are focusing on designing secure platform experiences for data and AI needs across enterprises. It offers advanced healthcare technology solutions, services for digital transformation, and the ability to implement these solutions at scale.

It's evident that IBM is deeply invested in harnessing the power of AI to revolutionize the healthcare sector. Their solutions aim to make healthcare more accessible, efficient, and patient-centric.

List of Healthcare Products Powered by Generative AI?

In 2023, the healthcare sector has witnessed the introduction and adoption of several Generative AI-enabled products. Here are some notable mentions:

Hippocratic AI:

This startup raised a significant $50 million seed round in May and is described as the first large language model designed explicitly for healthcare. Later, they secured an additional $15 million in July.

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Hyro:

Hyro raised $20 million in its Series B round. The startup offers a conversational AI platform utilized by several healthcare providers, including Intermountain Healthcare, Mercy Health, Novant Health, Hackensack Meridian Health, Weill Cornell Medicine, and Hospital for Special Surgery.

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Elsevier Health's Clinician of the Future 2023 Report:

Elsevier Health released a report highlighting the eagerness of clinicians to employ generative AI in supporting clinical decision-making.

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While these are some of the highlighted products and reports, it's worth noting that the excitement around generative AI remains high in the healthcare sector. The industry is currently focusing on how generative AI can enhance providers' efficiency, capacity, and job satisfaction while also improving patient experiences.

Examples of Healthcare Products Powered by Generative AI

In 2023, the healthcare sector has witnessed the introduction and adoption of several Generative AI-enabled products. Here are some notable mentions:

Hippocratic AI

This startup raised a significant $50 million seed round in May and is described as the first large language model designed explicitly for healthcare. Later, they secured an additional $15 million in July.

Hyro

Hyro raised $20 million in its Series B round. The startup offers a conversational AI platform utilized by several healthcare providers, including Intermountain Healthcare, Mercy Health, Novant Health, Hackensack Meridian Health, Weill Cornell Medicine, and Hospital for Special Surgery.

While these are some of the highlighted products and reports, it's worth noting that the excitement around generative AI remains high in the healthcare sector. The industry is currently focusing on how generative AI can enhance providers' efficiency, capacity, and job satisfaction while also improving patient experiences.