If you believe AI will soon be out-diagnosing doctors, you've bought into the hype. Headlines about AI chatbots passing medical exams and robots replacing surgeons are flashy, but these applications are far from real-world healthcare. Complex AI tools will come in the future, but their overall impact will be much smaller than picking all the low-hanging fruit available to us now.
This doesn't mean AI isn't transformative. Rather, AI's true power in healthcare today lies in tackling the mundane tasks that burden our system. Surprisingly simple AI tools are the ones making a real difference — saving time, streamlining processes, and ultimately improving patient care.
The fact is, healthcare providers today are drowning in administrative burdens. Repetitive documentation, inefficient scheduling, and endless data overwhelm them, and these are the true bottlenecks hindering quality care.
The time taken up by rote duties is truly significant. A study of physicians found that over a third of their total workday is consumed by EHR tasks and other administrative duties. A McKinsey survey of nurses underscores this, finding that only 54% of their shift is spent on direct patient care and personal connections with patients. Think of it as death by a thousand papercuts: Seemingly small, simple tasks drain the lifeblood of patient care.
The heavy burden of administrative work on healthcare workers has a devastating ripple effect. It directly steals away time from quality patient interactions, leaving doctors and nurses less present during consultations. This strain leads to increased burnout, diminishing the patient experience, raising the risk of medical errors, and compromising the very core of healthcare. Burnout also becomes a serious concern, as more nurses consider leaving their profession altogether.
This is where AI can help by making a real-world difference. AI can act as a powerful assistant for doctors and nurses, providing much-needed support for those on the front lines of care by tackling burdensome, repetitive tasks.
Patient appointment scheduling is a prime example: AI-powered systems can handle busy work by analyzing provider availability, patient preferences, appointment urgency, and even historical data. This optimizes every part of the schedule, reducing gaps, minimizing frustrating phone tags, and potentially opening up more appointments. The result is better patient access to care and a massive reduction in the tedious scheduling work that overwhelms office staff.
AI can also be a game-changer when it comes to medical reimbursement paperwork, helping nurses file more quickly and accurately. At Veta Health, we saw firsthand how nurses often used shorthand for efficiency while taking patient notes, but then were forced to spend extra time translating those notes into formal language for reimbursement forms. To limit that busy work, we created an AI-powered note optimizer that translates shorthand like "pt c/o SOB" into "patient complains of shortness of breath." This saves nurses a ton of time, improves documentation accuracy, and ultimately helps healthcare systems get those reimbursements.
In addition, AI can personalize care without overburdening nurses. At Veta Health, we use AI for personalized voice messages within our remote patient care program. We created a generative AI voice model based on one of our nurses, allowing us to craft countless message variations that sound like their nurse and even address patients by name. All the messages are still reviewed by a nurse for quality control, of course, but this tool adds a comforting touch for patients while saving time for nurses.
While the flashy, yet-unrealized possibilities of AI dominate headlines, the true power of simple AI often goes unnoticed. By automating ordinary yet burdensome tasks, AI has a profound ripple effect within healthcare. It gives back the most precious resource — time — allowing doctors and nurses to provide better, more focused care. Every minute saved adds up, allowing clinicians to focus their expertise on the irreplaceable aspects of care: empathy, complex decision-making, and building patient relationships.
Far from replacing jobs, simple AI helps address the urgent shortage of healthcare workers. It's time to shift the focus and re-evaluate where simple AI can make the most significant impact — starting with those seemingly mundane tasks that weigh heavily on healthcare workers.