Opinions may vary concerning just how transformative artificial intelligence is going to be across the healthcare sector, but it seems safe to say few practices within healthcare are going to remain unaffected.

Take benchmarking, for example.  According to a recent article at HealthcareFinance News, a recent white paper “found organizations that benchmark create a competitive environment promoting improvement and growth. Benchmarking also reduces department budgets by 3 percent, improves caseload by 10 percent and reduces wait times by a staggering 350 percent.”

More specifically, in healthcare the purpose of benchmarking “is to improve efficiency, quality of care, patient safety and patient satisfaction. The process involves looking at standards, best practices and evidence-based practices and then identifying potential areas of improvement.”

In other words, benchmarking is, or should be, a vital part of any healthcare organization's operational strategy, as it offers a point of reference from which an evaluation and subsequent process improvements can be made.

As tech writer Jeff Lagasse points out, “applying AI to the process allows for faster and more granular analyses of hospital data sets, which typically include information of interest to both consumers and providers. This is particularly advantageous when it comes to competitive benchmarking.

“Competitive benchmarking differs from internal benchmarking. The latter occurs when a hospital or health system compares functions within its organization, looking at each area and evaluating how it meets the set standards and goals.”

According to Raul Valdes-Perez, PhD, an AI computer scientist and co-founder of OnlyBoth, a benchmarking service provider, with AI-assisted benchmarking, it's important to ask question, as right human input will help AI deliver valuable insights.

"User experience is not based on throwing information at a user, where the user isn't sure what information is being answered," said Valdes-Perez. "What's best-in-class, for example? The software organizes results based on the questions that are answered."

Not everyone in healthcare undergoes benchmarking processes. Valdes-Perez hopes that changes, and thinks benchmarking will become more ubiquitous as technology and AI make comparing data sets easier.

"Our goal is to completely change the way people think about benchmarking," he said. "We want people to think about this as the gold standard. That takes time, especially in a complex arena like healthcare."