Advocate Health, a North Carolina-based health system, has recently announced its participation in a new pilot program with Microsoft. This program aims to utilize artificial intelligence to assist their nurses with documentation tasks.
The health system, which operates 11 hospitals and 300 care sites across Illinois, stated that the pilot will help with nursing documentation by capturing spoken observations and incorporating them into the electronic health record’s flowsheets. According to Katie Barr, the senior vice president and chief nursing informatics officer for Advocate Health, this is an excellent opportunity to leverage technology to alleviate the administrative burden of nursing documentation.
Advocate Health was chosen for this pilot program due to its prior involvement with Microsoft’s physician-focused product, which utilizes ambient listening technology. Barr explained that the program will take casual conversations between nurses and patients and convert them into discrete documentation, such as recording a patient’s pain level and its characteristics.
The initial pilot will involve 20 nurses on a single unit in Advocate Health’s southeast region. This will allow the organization to gather feedback and ensure the technology is well-received by the nursing staff. Once the initial pilot is successful, the plan is to expand the program to 100 nurses at the same site and then roll it out across the enterprise.
The primary issue this project aims to address is the significant amount of time nurses spend on documentation during their shifts, which is estimated to be around 150 minutes. By utilizing the AI-powered technology, the goal is to reduce the time nurses spend on flowsheet documentation, allowing them to devote more time to patient care and interaction.
Barr believes that this could be beneficial for patients, as nurses will be able to focus more on providing care and addressing their concerns, rather than being distracted by the need to document everything. However, she acknowledged that not all patients may appreciate this change, as some may prefer the nurse to maintain eye contact and engage with them directly during the encounter.
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