Children’s Hospital LA launches AI-driven ER patient app
The artificial intelligence-powered app gives families real-time updates on wait times, labs and imaging results, and tracks progress toward discharge during pediatric emergency visits.
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has partnered with Vital to integrate an artificial intelligence-driven tool called ERAdvisor that can improve the patient-family experience with clarity and predictability.
WHY IT MATTERS
Closing the gap between clinical documentation and clarity with plain-language test results and predictable wait times may ease the strain on patients and their families at CHLA, according to an announcement from Vital on Monday.
Upon ER registration, families receive a text message inviting them to log into a secure web-based interface and then receive real-time notifications and information on their child's status, location within the department, lab and imaging status, and changes in care.
Patient families access the free multilingual digital companion, Vital's ERAdvisor, through CHLA’s existing MyVisit portal, without account registration or any app downloads.
According to the company's website, it used generative AI and machine learning to create a doctor-to-patient translator engine that transforms clinical notes, imaging and lab results, and more to a 5th-grade reading level. Its AI tools also feature patient education, real-time surveys, service requests, follow-up scheduling and more.
Vital said it offers four AI tools to serve hospital emergency departments, inpatient stays and ongoing care. It says that it provides both patient and staff interfaces through integration with electronic health records, and that it is in use at 28 health systems and more than 100 hospitals in 19 states.
THE LARGER TREND
Epic is one EHR using AI to change workflows. Late last year, the vendor rolled out a new AI feature that summarizes prior notes in a patient chart, "specific to the context of the physician and the care setting," Sumit Rana, executive vice president of research and development at electronic health-records company Epic, explained in November.
Integrating AI beyond targeted visit summaries and into clinical decision support – when the process is built to account for life cycle management – could also improve emergency care, according to Andrew Taylor, associate professor of emergency medicine, director of emergency department clinical informatics and associate director of informatics and data science research at Yale University School of Medicine.
Taylor told Healthcare IT News – ahead of his HIMSS24 educational session on deploying AI for CDS in emergency medicine – that the success of AI hinges not just on the resilience of its infrastructure, but also on the acceptance by those who are directly impacted by their use.
"By actively involving these stakeholders, AI tools can be crafted to address the nuanced demands of healthcare delivery, ensuring that such innovations serve as a supportive extension of human care," he said.
ON THE RECORD
"Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is committed to creating a compassionate and welcoming healing environment, and we recognize the value in bringing personalized, innovative digital tools to enhance the patient-family experience," said Omkar Kulkarni, chief digital and transformation officer at CHLA, in a statement.
"Parents and caregivers can sometimes be anxious when their children are in the emergency department, but transparent communication and real-time updates can help to alleviate some of that anxiety," he added.
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