The Arkansas Center for Health Improvement (ACHI) is celebrating its 25th anniversary and recently hosted a symposium to mark the occasion. The event (titled: “The Future of Health Care in Arkansas”) was structured around two-panel discussions and a keynote speaker. The first panel focused on media perspectives in health care and began with discussions around Arkansas’ low ranking in health care. Many panelists pointed to poverty, elected officials, or a combination of both. Discussions moved on to media literacy and some of the issues faced in today’s market. In the past, “two quotes and a vote,” (i.e. a quote from one side of the issue, a quote from the opposing side of the issue, and the final vote) would have sufficiently covered most legislative processes but that is no longer the case. Fact-checking is a must and dealing with a misinformed public is common.
The keynote speaker, Shawn DuBravac, PhD, gave a thought-provoking presentation on the evolution of technology and health care in his talk titled, “Futurescape: Defining the Future of Health Care.” He framed the issue around data defining our environment, data making predictions inexpensive, data redefining processes, and data blurring the lines between the digital and physical world.
“The next big inflection point is upon us,” claimed DuBravac. He was alluding to artificial intelligence (AI) but before tackling such a robust topic, DuBravac took us on a history lesson of the ice industry from the 1840s to the 1940s. From cutting ice out of natural bodies of water to having an ice box where individual homes had instant access to ice, this was a story about a century industry devolution in the face of growing technology. When expensive, scarce resources evolve into inexpensive, abundant resources, we have new use case scenarios play out. Look at data and storage, for example – the thought of taking photos of food in the early days of cell phones was unheard of simply because of the idea of limited storage. Now, data storage is nearly unlimited and free.
According to DuBravac, what we’re going to start to see in health care is the use of AI as the initial encounter between an individual and their provider. AI will be able to triage the patient and have all the health information ready for the provider to review. “That’s the great promise of AI,” said DuBravac, “to make predictions.”
The last panel of the event centered around innovations and opportunities. Discussions began by reflecting on DuBravac’s presentation. Harold Betton, MD, commented that we should “stop concluding there are things we cannot do.” In line with the theme of evolving technology and workforce, Kevin Sexton, MD, remarked that the “calculator was a job position before it was a device.” The group then discussed what they thought the next few years would look like. “AI can summarize, bring things to the forefront that I will miss,” said Sexton. “That’s where we’ll see it first.” He continued by suggesting we will see large leaps forward “when we figure out how to remove the barriers that impact the patients and take action instead of summarization and risk stratification.”
For more information about the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, go here: https://achi.net/. For more information and free resources regarding telehealth, visit here: https://learntelehealth.org/.
