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Powering Healthcare ‘to the Nth Degree of AI’

25 October 2024
Blog

eClinicalWorks

eCWNC24 spotlights Genie, AI Assistant, and Enhancements Galore

The opening day of the eClinicalWorks® and healow® National Conference is a time for product announcements, unveiling enhancements to the Electronic Health Record, and clients cheering when they see the solutions they have been awaiting come to life onstage.

But opening day at NC24 was special. The spicy Prenote to the Keynote — featuring sizzling music, some very hot peppers, and a character strongly resembling a famous movie candy magnate (with a great voice to boot!) — hinted at the long list of exciting enhancements and announcements to come.

The crowd in the Texas Ballroom was not disappointed. This year’s list of healthcare IT innovations was indeed a long one — a fitting cap to a year in which eClinicalWorks marks its silver 25th anniversary and healow its 10th.

Although a full recap would require more words than we can offer here, the numbers give a sense of how far eCW and healow have come: 180,000+ providers in more than 100,000 facilities use eClinicalWorks to document 360 million+ visits annually. From a startup in 1999, eClinicalWorks now handles one-third of all office-based ambulatory visits nationwide.

But even more impressive and descriptive of the innovation behind it all was the item at the top of the ticket today: Genie, an AI-powered contact center solution — and one that goes far beyond what traditional contact centers can do — captured the spirit that unites so many of the innovations we offer.

The power of the ‘nth degree of AI’

eClinicalWorks CEO and co-founder Girish Navani noted that Genie is neither a humanoid nor a computer program, but an interactive, human-like assistant designed to work with medical professionals to solve their real-world challenges.

Navani’s bottom line on Genie could well describe the entire direction that NC24 is charting for the future of eClinicalWorks and healow customers: It will power practices “to the nth degree of AI.”

While artificial intelligence does raise some concerns, Navani made clear that eClinicalWorks is striving to incorporate the seemingly unlimited power of artificial intelligence in responsible, practical, and user-friendly ways.

A series of live demos showcased Genie’s abilities — to handle after-hours calls, book appointments, help patients pay their balances, and prepare patients for upcoming procedures such as a colonoscopy. If not quite human, Genie offered most everything that humans want when they call their doctor — speed, efficiency, politeness, and easy ways to get the information they need.

Contact, communication, and connections

What became clear throughout the morning was that Genie and the entire healthcare IT ecosystem that eClinicalWorks and healow has created has not been created to showcase technology per se but for a far higher purpose — to solve the real-world problems that medical professionals face daily.

At the close of the Genie demo, Navani fired questions at the AI in four languages. It replied immediately and accurately. A similar approach infuses the other products on display, with the healow family of solutions, for example, now supporting more than 30 languages.

Area after area had innovations to offer. For example:

An AI Assistant with writing skills can now take the vast amounts of information made available by the PRISMA interoperability solution and help fashion a concise, comprehensible Progress Note, complete with the codes the provider needs.
The eClinicalWorks EHR now offers a flat design, avoiding the stacking of screens one upon another and reducing the amount of time and number of clicks needed for navigation. A tile-based approach gets the provider where they want to be in far fewer steps and with greater overall visibility.
Many loud cheers were heard for advances to billing and Revenue Cycle Management, with AI tools to summarize Explanations of Benefits, the ability to link your eClinicalWorks EHR to your bank account and receive alerts, better appeals management, improved rules engines, and much more.

In these and so many other areas — customizable Progress Notes, weight-based dosing, easier-to-use forms, Value-Based Care, and healow Prime+ to cut prescription costs — the common theme was clear: Healthcare IT should serve the needs of patients and providers to communicate faster, more clearly, and in ways that advance patient health.

And that was only the morning. The thousands of attendees had lots to think about during lunch, followed by a full afternoon of breakout sessions to begin the main course of every National Conference.

It is in those sessions — which will continue throughout the weekend — that healthcare IT knowledge is transferred and shared, where confidence builds, where connections are made, and where a healthier future begins.

“Please start thinking about reskilling in the age of AI,” Navani reminded attendees.

Once upon a time not very long ago, that would have sounded like a very tall order. Today, it feels within reach, thanks to the help of one very smart Genie and thousands of even smarter providers and IT professionals who continue year after year to improve healthcare together.