Imagine our world without smartphones. Without internet access and GPS, how could we navigate around real-time traffic jams or access the current live weather conditions and forecasts to make plans for anything. Technology is growing nearly as fast as we can dream these things up. Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is now seamlessly integrating into new technology while healthcare is often struggling to keep up. Utilizing A.I. effectively may play a positive role in improving the patient journey and overall quality of care.
This week President Trump announced the new United States Space Force logo and it is shockingly similar to the United Federation of Planets logo from the Star Trek series by Gene Roddenberry. "After consultation with our Great Military Leaders, designers, and others, I am pleased to present the new logo for the United States Space Force, the Sixth Branch of our Magnificent Military!" he tweeted.
It occurred to me how many technologies have come to realization based from the dreams of science fiction. I mean to say if you want to imagine what the future technologies will include, all you need to do is pay attention to the gadgets and concepts that are in the latest SyFy movies. I seriously doubt we will have holographic doctors that can interact with the physical world or molecular transporter capability any time soon but with the advancements of A.I., I could see greater accuracy in diagnosing complex conditions.
In the same way the GPS systems in our smartphone shows us when to make a left turn, IT solutions integrated with A.I. will empower healthcare providers and social services with accurate and timely patient data that not only identify social determinants of health (SDoH) but will offer a path to effective intervention that addresses the respective barrier(s) to care. I believe we have the technology available today to tackle this complex issue and integrate SDoH into clinical software and subsequent care. Having A.I. data integration systems, healthcare will have improved cohesion between disparate electronic health records (EHRs), customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and various other systems with key patient data.