What health care providers actually want from AI

Hospitals and health systems are looking at AI-enabled solutions that target their most urgent pain points: staffing shortages, clinician burnout, rising costs, and patient bottlenecks. These operational realities keep leadership up at night, and AI solutions  must directly address them.

For instance, hospitals and health systems are eager for AI tools that can reduce documentation burden for physicians and nurses. Natural language processing (NLP) solutions that auto-generate clinical notes or streamline coding to free up time for direct patient care are far more compelling pitches than generic efficiency gains. Similarly, predictive analytics that help optimize staffing levels or manage patient flows can directly address operational workflow and improve throughput.

Ultimately, if an AI solution doesn’t target these critical issues and deliver tangible benefits, it’s unlikely to capture serious buyer interest.

Demonstrate real-world results

AI solutions need validation in environments that mirror actual care settings. The first step toward that is to leverage high-quality, well-curated real-world data to drive reliable insights and avoid misleading results when building and refining AI models. 

Then, hospitals and health systems need evidence that the solution does what it claims to do, for instance through independent-third party validation, pilot projects, peer-reviewed publications, or documented case studies.

Mayo Clinic Platform offers a rigorous independent process where clinical, data science, and regulatory experts evaluate a solution for intended use, proposed value, and clinical and algorithmic performance, which gives innovators the credibility their solutions need to win the confidence of health-care leaders.    

Integration with existing systems

With so many demands, health-care IT leaders have little patience for standalone AI tools that create additional complexity. They want solutions that integrate seamlessly into existing systems and workflows. Compatibility with major electronic health record (EHR) platforms, robust APIs, and smooth data ingestion processes are now baseline requirements.

Custom integrations that require significant IT resources—or worse, create duplicative work—are deal breakers for many organizations already stretched thin. The less disruption an AI solution introduces, the more likely it is to gain traction. This is the reason solution developers are turning to platforms like Mayo Clinic Platform Solutions Studio, a program that provides seamless integration, single implementation, expert guidance to reduce risk, and a simplified process to accelerate solution adoption among healthcare providers.