You can find pretty much anything on the internet, these days.  And from a healthcare perspective that’s not always a good thing, especially as an increasing number of people are going online to try to find answers to medical questions.

The problem, of course, is that it’s often just as easy to find the wrong information as it is to find the right information, and some providers are turning to AI-powered tools to help guide their patients in the right direction.

At HealthcareIT News, Bill Siwicki recently described the efforts of Milwaukee-based Froedtert & The Medical College of Wisconsin health system, who have taken steps to make navigating health information easier for the community they serve. 

“Traditional self-service care navigation rarely provides alternative methods for patients who may not fit the classical care pathway, and, not to mention, the options patients are most often presented with tend to have variable results,” Kelly Stevenson, implementation manager with Inception Health, the innovation accelerator of the Froedtert & The Medical College of Wisconsin health system, told Siwicki.

“Froedtert & MCW health network sought to provide people with a trustworthy tool that would help patients personally triage their care journey, connecting patients with the right medical care at the right time.”

Specifically, the system turned to an AI-powered digital health assistant, from health IT vendor Buoy Health, that provides guidance and information to patients while navigating them to appropriate care.

“Buoy’s technology solution offered an intelligent, AI-driven virtual triage tool, available to the public via Froedtert’s website, which supports care on an individual’s terms, builds trust, and drives operational efficiencies and growth by increasing referrals and routing people to appropriate venues of care,” Stevenson said.  “It all begins with people searching for symptoms online, and Buoy’s interface could improve the individual’s triage experience before confusion and anxiety clouded decision making.”

The upshot, writes Siwicki, is that “thousands of people in the community served by the health system have engaged with the online assistant with about 70% of them completing a full interview. The technology has actively changed people’s behaviors such that more than 30% of patients initially seeking out high-cost forms of care, such as emergency care and urgent care, were redirected to lower, condition-appropriate forms of care such as primary care and self-care.”

And, adds Stevenson, the health system’s employee base has given the online assistant a rating of four out of five stars, and 78% of staff users agree with at least one of the matched conditions, illustrating high user trust.

In short, she said, “it is an important piece of a coordinated digital strategy aimed at providing value to people and earning trust and a preference for the health network.”