Premature Babies Deserve Mature AI

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has dominated healthcare discourse this past year, and for good reason: Hospitals are woefully understaffed, ill-prepared for spikes in demand for care, and cannot afford to sit idle while their margins constrict. The universe of AI-enabled digital health solutions, each of which promises a way out of the darkness and into a bright new future of care, is growing by the day.

Tracy Warren

In some cases, these tools are having a marked effect on how clinicians work. They generate documentation, automate clerical tasks, and streamline clinical workflow within the electronic health record (EHR). All good functions, to be sure. But none of them is perfect, because EHR data are notoriously imperfect.

In primary care, specialty care, and long-term care, imperfect works for now. Although every generative AI technology is likely to produce at least the occasional hallucination, they ultimately save clinicians in these settings more time than it takes to fix incorrect outputs. Clinicians in intensive care facilities, however, do not have the privilege of being able to accept imperfect AI.

In intensive care settings, the slightest errors can jeopardize outcomes. The problem is especially acute in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs), where precise measurements and complex arithmetic for nutritional intervention are a life-sustaining part of care delivery.