Intermountain expands DAX Copilot genAI deployment

The goal is to tackle documentation burden, giving clinicians more time with their patients and decreasing burnout, says the health system's chief clinical officer.
By Nathan Eddy
09:34 AM

Photo: Intermountain

Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare is rolling out Microsoft subsidiary Nuance Communications' Dragon Ambient eXperience Copilot across its seven-state footprint, the health system announced.

WHY IT MATTERS
The aim is to leverage DAX's automation capabilities to drive operational efficiencies in clinical documentation and administrative tasks, thereby reducing the burden on healthcare professionals.

DAX captures multiparty conversations in real-time, allowing clinicians to reduce screen time and more fully engage with patients while documenting the discussion through a mobile app.

The platform automatically generates specialty-specific clinical documentation summaries from these conversations, which are then delivered to the application or Dragon Medical One desktop for clinician review and editing.

Use of genAI tools, including DAX CoPilot, has the potential to mitigate the rising trend in physician burnout by reducing administrative burdens, including clinical note-taking and other medical documentation tasks.

An athenahealth February survey of 1,003 primary care and specialist physicians revealed that 83% said AI could reduce administrative burdens and reduce the burnout risk associated with overwhelming workloads and reduced staff.

In April, Chicago-based health system Rush said it plans to pilot Suki's AI assistant across 30 specialties, potentially reducing clinical documentation time by 72%.

THE LARGER TREND
Offering full integration into Epic EHR, more than 150 hospitals and health systems are utilizing DAX Copilot to draft clinical notes and record patient visits within their workflows.

In January, Vanderbilt University Medical Center began piloting the DAX Copilot system among care specialists in VUMC's Division of General Internal Medicine and Public Health and its Department of Orthopedic Surgery.

The announcement adds to the avalanche of genAI integration news across the healthcare ecosystem, which is impacting everything from patient care to biological data analysis, and the technology is expected to be a continued presence as use cases develop further.

Development of genAI applications for healthcare has global implications, and involves the world's largest care providers and technology companies, including chipmaker NVIDIA.

The World Health Organization recently expanded its AI assistant called S.A.R.A.H (formerly known as Florence) to promote global health through an interactive human systems-based training approach for personalized engagement.

ON THE RECORD
"By implementing DAX Copilot, we have an opportunity to significantly reduce the time our providers spend on that documentation, a task which often occurs after work hours. Not only will this afford our physicians and APPs more time with their patients, it will also help decrease burnout among clinicians," Intermountain Health chief clinical officer JP Valin said in a statement.

Nathan Eddy is a healthcare and technology freelancer based in Berlin.
Email the writer: nathaneddy@gmail.com
Twitter: @dropdeaded209

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