It’s no secret that, in broad terms, the healthcare industry is steadily being transformed through the increasing use of sophisticated analytics and AI/machine learning solutions.  But what percentage of providers and healthcare organizations are seriously investing in AI?

That’s one question put to respondents in a recent survey from HealthLeaders Media in its November/December 2019 HealthLeaders Intelligence Report, Investing For the Future: Analytics, AI, and ROI.  

HealthLeaders surveyed 128 individuals representing different healthcare provider organizations, finding that 22 percent of healthcare organizations use a software platform that provides AI capability, an eight-point increase from 2017, while 31 percent said they plan to have AI capability within the next three years.

According to the report, providers and healthcare organizations see a wide range of applications for AI, with 81 percent of respondents saying “their organizations currently or plan to apply the technology to clinical data, 72 percent to financial data, and 59 percent to patient data.”

Organizations also see potential in analytics capabilities, with 63 percent of respondents saying they plan to increase their investments in analytics, while 35 percent said their investments would stay the same. Just two percent of respondents said their investments would decrease.

Speaking with HealthLeaders Media,  Todd Stewart, MD, vice president of clinical integrated solutions and clinical informatics at Mercy Technology Services, the IT division of St. Louis–based Mercy,  suggested that while analytics certainly offers the potential of financial rewards, the gains are not only about capturing additional margin. ROI can also be about improving the quality of care, reducing costs, and improving efficiency.

“There are two components to ROI,” says Stewart. “There’s the R and then there’s the I. At Mercy, we have a very large effort working on the "I" part of this, which includes manpower, labor, and financial investment. But the "R" is also really, really important. And that gets to the concept of data as an asset. We do quite a bit of work trying to think through that. How do we define it? How do we define return on data, which is essentially what analytics is?”

Once again, it seems the answer to the question is in the eyes of the beholder, as the 78 percent of report respondents said they use descriptive analytics for financial data, while 81 percent said they leverage descriptive analytics for their clinical data.

However, fewer participants use predictive capabilities for financial and clinical data analytics, 64 percent on the financial side and 52 percent on the financial.