Leading the Way With Care

AI Innovations Advancing Patient Care

At first glance, artificial intelligence (AI) and patient experience may not appear to go hand in hand. Yet UC San Diego Health has been successfully harnessing AI’s capacity to make health care safer and more personal, according to Karandeep Singh, MD, the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Endowed Chair in Digital Health Innovation at UC San Diego School of Medicine and chief health AI officer at UC San Diego Health.

UC San Diego Health is a leader in envisioning a health system-based mission control center, fueled by AI, that will predict patient flow, monitor patient health and identify opportunities to improve quality and safety in real time. Launched in 2021, the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation at UC San Diego Health (JCHI) is already using technology to heighten the human experience in health care.

As it grows to its full capacity within the next five years, the digital health hub will monitor patient health and safety through the integration of data streams from bedside monitors, imaging, sensors, electronic health records and wearable devices. The vision is to develop AI algorithms and models that proactively improve personalized treatment, patient experience and health equity.

Since its launch, JCHI has already implemented a novel, multi-modal AI-based sepsis prediction algorithm for people in the hospital who are at greatest risk of developing the deadly infection that can cause organ failure. Patients with chronic diseases are currently using remote telemonitoring, which helps keep them at home and out of the emergency department. UC San Diego Health was also one of the first health systems in the country to pilot the use of generative AI to draft replies to patient messages inside the Epic Systems electronic health record, which has been shown to improve communication quality, efficiency and patient engagement while helping to ease providers’ cognitive burden. Importantly, UC San Diego Health was one of the first health systems to transparently disclose the use of this tool to patients.

“When it comes to delivering care, we are finding that AI tools and technology can serve as co-pilots to clinicians,” Singh said.“These tools can help us anticipate capacity issues, ease administrative burden and assist in treating patients in a timely manner.”

These new tools ensure that patient care decisions are made with the most accurate information. New AI projects on the horizon at UC San Diego Health include identifying barriers to patient discharge, triaging and forecasting hospital capacity issues, and evaluating the use of ambient AI documentation technology to draft and summarize documents typically prepared by hand.