As a nurse specializing in neuroscience at Tampa General Hospital, Renee Albert spends a lot of time updating charts.
The process involves writing down exactly what they did with patients and when. It can eat up a lot of time – some nurses spend up to 15% of their shifts documenting interactions with patients.
In an effort to cut down on that, Tampa General Hospital implemented a pilot artificial intelligence program in February. Using “ambient listening technology” developed by Microsoft and Epic, a healthcare technology company, the AI program listens while nurses are with patients and converts the audio to clinical summaries.
To use the tech, nurses are given smartphones with an app built in, said Amit Patel, the chief nursing informatics officer at Tampa General. Once logged in, nurses open individual patients’ charts, press record and the app starts listening.
Before she starts recording, Albert asks her patients if they are OK with ambient listening. So far no one has declined, she said.
Albert’s floor was one of the first in the hospital to try it out. Wendi Goodson-Celerin, chief nursing executive at Tampa General, said the neurological floor was chosen for the pilot program because of the heavy workload nurses face.
It was tough to train all of the nurses on the AI, said Goodson-Celerin. They had varying levels of proficiency among the staff, and some were reluctant. But Goodson-Celerin said the tech is essential for the hospital to keep up in a changing world.
The current environment is “forever changing, and so we have to be on the forefront of that,” she said. “Or you kind of get left behind, and you get stagnant.”
There were some growing pains in the beginning though.
The AI made mistakes, so Albert had to correct them. This took her about the same time as it did to manually document. But the AI was able to improve, and now fewer corrections are needed.
The feedback from the nurses helps improve the AI, said Patel.
Over time Albert and her collogues developed strategies on how to best use it. If a patient is in a shared room, for example, Albert often goes into the hallway or another quiet area because the AI could pick up on nearby voices.
Tampa General has not had to pay for the current program, but by the end of the year, Patel expects Microsoft and Epic to roll out the technology in full. He said the hospital is prepared to absorb those costs once they come, but declined to say how much.
Keep up with Tampa Bay’s top headlines
Subscribe to our free DayStarter newsletter
We’ll deliver the latest news and information you need to know every morning.
You’re all signed up!
Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started.
The tech may end up saving the hospital money because nurses will work fewer overtime hours completing paperwork, said Goodson-Celerin.
Over the next few months, Albert expects the ambient listening technology to get better as it learns from past experiences. It has allowed her to focus more on patients, instead of constantly updating charts.
“I hope to have it where the nurse is not really in front of a keyboard much at all during a shift,” said Patel.
