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We try to avoid overusing the word ‘game changer’, but when it comes to artificial intelligence in healthcare, it is perhaps a worthy use, as we examine the many ways AI has entered the sector.
As Microsoft points out, 79% of healthcare organizations are using AI to some degree, and it’s not just using it that counts, it’s how it is being used — cutting cost, helping with drug research, or on the frontline with diagnosis and treatments.
According to Markets and Markets, the global AI in healthcare market is worth $20.9 billion in 2024 — and might reach $148.4 billion by 2029.
“The AI vendor market [in healthcare] is currently booming and most of these innovations have either been brought to market or are in the beta development phase,” Sharon Auma-Ebanyat, research director for healthcare services at Info-Tech Research Group, told Techopedia.
It’s telling that the world’s most valuable AI startup, OpenAI, has been courting healthcare providers to expand its influence in the industry. But what has OpenAI been doing in healthcare, exactly?
Key Takeaways
- AI in healthcare is revolutionizing the sector, with 79% of organizations leveraging it for cost reduction, drug research, and frontline diagnosis and treatment.
- The global AI healthcare market, valued at $20.9 billion in 2024, is projected to reach $148.4 billion by 2029.
- OpenAI’s partnerships, including with Color Health, Moderna, and Oscar Health, demonstrate significant improvements in cancer screening, dosage selection, and clinical documentation.
- Color Health’s GPT-4o assistant enhances cancer screening, improving detection rates and generating personalized care plans.
- Moderna uses of custom GPTs and Oscar Health’s automation of documentation and claims processing improve healthcare workflows and efficiency.
How OpenAI is Changing Healthcare
This year alone, OpenAI has unveiled a spate of partnerships with healthcare providers that have been using OpenAI’s application programming interfaces (APIs) to build internal chatbots or using prebuilt tools like ChatGPT Enterprise to enhance their operations.
For example, Color Health has been using GPT-4o to help streamline cancer screening, working with Moderna to develop an internal chatbot and determine correct clinical dosages, and partnering with Oscar Health to produce a clinical documentation and claims assistant.
These partnerships, which we’ll examine in more detail, are just the tip of the iceberg. It’s also worth noting that in February, OpenAI made a substantial investment in Ambience Healthcare, leading a $70 billion funding round for a vendor offering a solution to generate medical notes in real time.
Each of these partnerships not only demonstrates how OpenAI is making inroads into the healthcare market, but also reveals how AI is being used to augment processes throughout the industry.
OpenAI and Color Health: Streamlining Cancer Screening
Earlier this month, OpenAI released a blog post detailing how Color Health, a healthcare provider that’s served over 7 million patients since 2013, developed an AI assistant using GPT-4o.
Color Health’s AI assistant has been designed to help doctors screen and treat cancer patients. The organization hopes that in the latter half of 2024, it will generate personalized care plans for over 200,000 patients.
In this use case, the GPT-4o language model ingests patient data, including personal risk factors and family history, as well as clinical guidelines to develop a personalized cancer screening plan.
Doctors can then ask the assistant questions, including, “What screenings should the patient be doing?” The assistant also generates documentation such as medical necessity documents and insurance pre-authorizations.
OpenAI claims that the GPT-4o copilot has already resulted in significant improvements. Providers using the copilot identified four times more labs, imaging, biopsy, and pathology results than those without.
The potential impact of this use case can’t be understated, as faster cancer screening can help to save lives. As the post highlights, patients whose treatments are delayed by just four weeks face a 6-13% higher risk of mortality.
OpenAI and Moderna: Creating Custom GPTs and Selecting Dosage
Back in April, OpenAI also released a post detailing its partnership with Moderna, one of the developers of the COVID-19 vaccine. Moderna’s day-to-day work involves developing a range of mRNA medicines, including a vaccine against MRV.
Moderna and OpenAI partnered together in early 2023, with the latter developing an internal chatbot known as mChat, before later adopting ChatGPT Enterprise across thousands of employees.
“As a science-based company, we research everything,” Brice Challamel, Head of AI Products and platforms at Moderna, said in the official blog post. “We found that the net promoter score of ChatGPT Enterprise was through the roof. This was by far the company-favorite solution and the one we decided to double down on.”
Within two months of adopting ChatGPT Enterprise, Moderna had 750 custom GPTs developed across the company, 40% of which were created by weekly active users.
At the same time, Moderna has also been working on a GPT pilot known as Dose ID. Dose ID can review clinical data across large datasets to help inform clinicians on the ideal dosage for patient treatment. Users can ask questions on dosage as well as create customized data visualizations.
What’s notable about this partnership isn’t just that ChatGPT Enterprise is making its way into healthcare but that so many users experimented with custom GPTs to expedite their workflows. This shows that there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to AI adoption; users have a say in how they automate their own workflows, too.
OpenAI and Oscar Health: Automating Clinical Documentation and Claims
Also back in April, OpenAI highlighted its partnership with Oscar Health. Oscar health is a healthcare and insurance company that signed a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with OpenAI to help maintain HIPAA compliance.
Oscar Health has been using OpenAI’s solutions to automate a range of manual processes. For example, the startup has used OpenAI’s APIs to help assist in creating clinical documentation. This has reduced the time it takes to document medical care conversations and review lab tests by nearly 40%.
In addition, the provider has created a claims assistant copilot that allows users to ask questions about patient claims.
According to OpenAI, the claims assistant can reduce the time it takes for the claims processing team to resolve escalations by 50%, with accuracy that is the same as or better than human agents. Oscal Health expects to use this solution to automate the investigation of 4,000 tickets per month — or 48,000 tickets by the end of 2024.
This partnership shows that AI doesn’t always need to be used in glamorous use cases. Even increasing the speed of documentation or claims processing can lead to valuable improvements across an organization. In short, AI doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel to be useful; it just needs to optimize a niche process.
The Bottom Line
Each of these partnerships is expanding into more segments of the healthcare industry. OpenAI, through its early mover advantage and proactive work with third-party companies, has been quick to integrate itself as one of the leading providers in the industry.
While there is still a long way to go for AI adoption in healthcare, these partnerships highlight that more and more providers are experimenting with disruptive technologies to optimize patient treatment and diagnosis.
