DENVER — Dr. Daniel Kortsch is a pretty popular guy these days in the hallways of Denver Health, the hospital where he works in primary care.
Colleagues come up to him for spontaneous hugs. He’s received at least one box of chocolates.
The reason for this affection has to do with Kortsch’s other job at the hospital — as chief medical information officer, sort of a guru at the intersection of technology and patient care. After months of testing, Denver Health is now widely rolling out an artificial intelligence program that helps doctors transcribe conversations with patients and then convert them into notes that can be entered into the hospital’s electronic medical records system.
Sound simple enough? Well, for doctors overburdened with tedious documentation work long after their day at the clinic is over, it is life-changing.
“It’s transformational,” Kortsch said. “I think it is the most transformational technology I have seen in my medical practice, ever.”
Artificial intelligence has for years now been making its way into patient rooms and medical records in Colorado, whether that is to diagnose tricky conditions or to spot health risks before they emerge. But Denver Health’s use of AI highlights another front: The potential for AI programs to make doctors’ workflow a little less clunky and burdensome.
The program Denver Health uses comes from a company called Nabla, which now counts 50,000 doctors and other medical practitioners across the globe — but mostly in the United States — as adopters. The Nabla program supports 35 languages, and it integrates directly with a hospital’s medical record system.
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