Many within health care may remember the early days of telehealth that required a dependence on hardware consoles given bandwidth scarcity. Today, bandwidth is no issue, and videoconferencing – and video visits – are now the new normal.
Today, another new normal is emerging. Large Language Models (LLMs) and the devices that can run them are becoming accessible to anyone. With the open-sourcing of models on platforms like Ollama, hobbyist communities have sprung up around tuning, utilizing, and configuring them to run on laptops and home machines. Giants like Apple are actively partnering with OpenAI. It won’t be long before nearly everyone has an LLM in their hand – and in that world, platforms that embrace LLMs will be a force multiplier by enhancing search and synthesis of new content.
It’s easy to imagine how this will translate to consumer experiences in health care. An LLM that can consider a patient’s treatment history as it reminds a patient to complete the next leg of their cancer journey has the potential to be far more powerful than a retailer recommending my next pair of shoes. Healthcare systems have an exciting new opportunity because the same type of AI tools that have powered a digital retail revolution for the last three decades are within their reach.
But to successfully create those experiences and leverage those tools, healthcare organizations must consider key factors.
Safety and security are paramount. End-to-end patient flows that close the loop with the provider demand a secure, proven identity at their heart. In fact, given that much of the value will be unlocked under the login since PHI is at play, a standards-based, federate-able authentication solution is the first step.
Quick and efficient experience delivery. Transmitting these new models' power directly into patients' hands quickly and efficiently is vital to success. That means having a platform that can orchestrate end-to-end across experiences – without the need to custom-craft every unique patient journey.
A team approach. Neither the EMR, CRM or any expanding solution in this space can do it alone. A good consumer engagement strategy must include an ecosystem of players powered by open APIs. That ecosystem allows health systems to fully augment their existing staff and scale individualized patient care options.
Starting three years ago, a small band of health system innovators working on building patient recommendation engines recognized those engines would have limited value if the interaction of the patient had to be anonymous and a multitude of LLM engines (heuristic, AI, NLP and otherwise) were propagated without a standard way of delivering value to a given patient.
That team went back to the drawing board and incubated the Praia Health platform that exists today. Praia Health combines a health system patient identity with a personalization chassis that brings in recommendations from nearly any source. We’re seeing in real time, the rapid expansion of AI to better serve patients and health systems - safely and securely.
As the new normal unfolds, the Praia platform was built for what’s coming next. It was built to be a force multiplier to propel the consumer experience.
It was built AI-ready – for the health system of the future.
