WellSpan Health Launches Patient-Facing GenAI Healthcare Agent

What You Should Know: 

– WellSpan Health, a leading integrated healthcare provider known for its innovation, is partnering with Hippocratic AI, a pioneer in healthcare-focused large language models, to introduce a groundbreaking clinical GenAI healthcare agent. 

– The conversational AI-powered service will directly interact with patients, enhancing healthcare access, equity, and outcomes.

Improve Access and Health Screening for Patients

Hippocratic AI’s GenAI agent, designed for telephone communication, has already engaged with over 100 WellSpan patients this month, improving access to life-saving cancer screenings. This technology allows WellSpan to address care gaps in multilingual and underserved communities, scaling resources previously unavailable.

WellSpan has identified thousands of patients eligible for colorectal cancer screenings who have not yet undergone them. Hippocratic AI’s agent is enhancing access for those with language barriers or difficulties navigating the online patient portal, MyWellSpan. Plans are underway to expand language support to include Haitian Creole and Nepali.

The GenAI agent engages patients in comprehensive and empathetic conversations about their colorectal health, providing detailed transcripts to WellSpan clinicians for review. In some cases, the agent can transfer patients to a human clinician or facilitate follow-up calls.

Future Development

Future GenAI agents are being developed to support critical workflows like chronic care management, post-discharge follow-up for specific conditions, wellness surveys, health risk assessments, and pre-operative instructions.

“At WellSpan, we’re reimaging healthcare by tapping into innovation that supports our clinical teams, and we’re excited to introduce this cutting-edge technology for our patients in ways that also allow us to address health disparities,” said Kasey Paulus, senior vice president and chief nursing executive, WellSpan Health. “We’re committed to utilizing AI that’s designed to ensure patient safety continues to be our top priority and our collaboration in quality assurance with Hippocratic AI only strengthens that approach.”