We are entering a new era in health care where prevention strategies can be intensified maximizing the power of AI and increasing patient engagement. Preventive care has always been a priority for clinicians: supporting value-based care initiatives, improving health outcomes and reducing costs.
At Wolters Kluwer Health, we see significant commitment in this area. Within the UpToDate® clinical decision support platform, clinicians searched six major prevention categories more than 25.6 million times over a three-year period. The ability to leverage these insights with new AI technologies, EHR data, and engaging patient education to encourage overall wellness can help drive better outcomes for healthcare organizations.
Moving from reactive to proactive treatment
Historically, finding patients in need of preventive services required an exhaustive review of paper records. EHRs have moved us forward, allowing us to generate reports and identify groups of patients in need of services. Organizations are still working to get the most out of these reports, and many clinicians feel like we are still somewhat reactive since our main focus is usually the patient in front of us who is actively seeking care.
Now AI is able to proactively connect data in new ways and at scale. It can search, identify patients, and suggest the best way to communicate with individuals based on their preferences and past response rates. Some patients may want to respond to a letter or text message, or perhaps an email with a follow-up text message. Others may prefer patient portal messages. Individual clinicians cannot track all preferences, but AI can leverage clinical notes to help tailor and personalize patient outreach to ensure more effective follow-up on preventative care.
AI can also sift through large amounts of EHR data collected over the past decades and from millions of patient encounters, and analyze it to identify population health opportunities. For example, we see a increase in pickleball injuriesespecially among those over 60. It has become a popular way to stay fit and is also linked to injuries such as falls, sprains and fractures. AI can help clinicians make these connections when writing patient notes, and then, perhaps, it can result in useful patient education about potential injury mitigation.