York, Pa., Sept. 26, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- WellSpan Health, an integrated care delivery system dedicated to clinical and operational innovation, has partnered with Hippocratic AI, the creators of the first patient-facing, safety-driven large language model (LLM) designed for healthcare. Together, they announced today the launch of a pioneering clinical GenAI healthcare agent—a conversational AI-powered service tailored to interact with patients, aiming to improve healthcare access, equity, and outcomes.
Hippocratic AI’s GenAI healthcare agent contacts patients by telephone. It has already engaged with more than 100 of WellSpan’s Spanish-speaking and English-speaking patients this month to improve access to life-saving cancer screenings. These calls allow WellSpan to close care gaps with many of its multi-lingual and underserved populations by scaling resources that have not existed in the past. The health system is also using another Hippocratic AI agent with low-risk patients undergoing scheduled colonoscopy preparation, and follow-up to their procedure.
WellSpan has identified thousands of patients eligible for colorectal cancer screenings who have not engaged with screenings to date. This tool increases access for those who may have language barriers or difficulty accessing the system’s online patient portal, MyWellSpan. Plans are in development to launch additional languages spoken in other communities the health system serves, including Haitian Creole and Nepali.
“At WellSpan, we’re reimaging healthcare by tapping into innovation that supports our clinical teams, and we’re excited to introduce this cutting-edge technology for our patients in ways that also allow us to address health disparities,” said Kasey Paulus, senior vice president and chief nursing executive, WellSpan Health. “We’re committed to utilizing AI that’s designed to ensure patient safety continues to be our top priority and our collaboration in quality assurance with Hippocratic AI only strengthens that approach.”
Hippocratic AI’s GenAI agents comprehensively and empathetically engage patients in conversation, asking and answering questions relating to their colorectal health, providing a complete transcript of the conversation to WellSpan clinicians for review, and in some cases live transfer to or later follow-up by a human clinician. Initial calls in the pilot will also be monitored by a human clinician to ensure patient safety.
“WellSpan Health is the first of our health system customers to fully integrate our generative AI healthcare agent into their daily operations, increasing their capabilities to provide health equity across all of the diverse communities they serve,” said Munjal Shah, CEO and Co-Founder of Hippocratic AI. “At Hippocratic AI, our mission is to not only address existing staffing shortages but go above and beyond to unlock an age of true healthcare abundance. With partners like WellSpan, we can finally begin to realize a world in which each one of us has unlimited access to safe, high-quality, personalized care. We commend them for their vision and commitment to putting breakthrough solutions into practice. They are a shining example of how healthcare providers and technology providers can work together to dramatically improve healthcare accessibility in their community, particularly those underserved.”
With this launch of the first patient-facing GenAI healthcare agent, WellSpan and Hippocratic AI are working together to address the severe healthcare workforce shortage impacting health systems across the country. These AI-powered workflows are designed to leverage technology to support care team members to improve the way health systems operate and deliver care.
Other GenAI agents in development will support critical workflows such as chronic care management, post-discharge follow-up for specific conditions such as congestive heart failure and kidney disease, wellness and social determinants of health surveys, health risk assessments, and pre-operative patient instructions.
