AvaSure CEO Adam McMullan

Artificial Intelligence

Real-World Lessons From NYU’s ChatGPT Roll Out

NYU Langone Health just lifted the curtain on its recent ChatGPT experiment, publishing an impressively candid look at all of the real-world data from its system-wide roll out.

A new article in JAMIA details the first six months of usage and cost metrics for NYU’s HIPAA-compliant version of ChatGPT 3.5 (dubbed GenAI Studio), and the numbers paint a promising picture of AI’s first steps in healthcare. Here’s a snapshot of the results:

Adoption

• 1,007 users were onboarded (2.5% of NYU’s 40k employees)
• GenAI Studio had 60 average weekly users (submitting 671 queries/week)
• 27% of users interacted with GenAI Studio daily (Table: Usage Data)

Use Cases

• Majority of users were from research and clinical departments
• Most common use cases were writing, editing, data analysis, and idea generation
• Examples: creating teaching materials for bedside nurses, drafting email responses, assessing clinical reasoning documentation, and SQL translation

Costs

• 112M tokens were used during the six months of implementation 
• Total token cost was $4,200 ($8,400 annualized)
• Divide that cost by the 60 average weekly users, and it’s under $3 per user per week 

While initial adoption seems a bit low at 60 weekly users out of the 40k employees that were offered access, the wide range of helpful use cases and relatively low costs make ChatGPT pretty close to a no-brainer for improving productivity.

• User surveys also gave GenAI Studio high marks for ease of use and overall experience, although many users noted difficulties with prompt construction and felt underprepared without more in-depth training.

NYU’s biggest tip for GenAI implementations: continuous engagement and education is key for driving adoption. GenAI Studio saw large spikes in new users and utilization following “prompt-a-thons” where employees could practice and get feedback on prompt construction.

The Takeaway

For healthcare organizations watching from the wings, NYU Langone Health was as transparent as it gets regarding the benefits and challenges of its system-wide roll out, and the case study serves up a practical playbook for similar AI deployments.

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Curate, Create, & Share at the Point of Care

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The Wire

• Veradigm Ambient Scribe: Veradigm introduced a shiny new ambient scribe powered by AvodahMed’s GenAI that transcribes patient-provider interactions into structured medical notes. The scribe naturally integrates seamlessly with the Veradigm EHR, joining a portfolio that’s expanded to include everything from automated chart retrieval to bi-directional connectivity between providers and life sciences orgs. No word yet on any acquisition updates, although it sounds like an announcement could hit any day now.

• TailorMed Closes $40M: TailorMed locked in a $40M financing round to eliminate barriers to medication access by connecting patients to financial assistance. The TailorMed platform manages the full lifecycle of support programs for patients, providers, payors, and life sciences orgs (direct integration with manufacturer assistance programs) to reduce the cost of care and help drive revenue. The fact that six different health systems participated in the round seems to suggest that TailorMed’s been pretty successful on both fronts.

• Widening Life Expectancy Gap: The life expectancy gap in the U.S. between those who live the longest and those who live the shortest lives has widened to 20 years, up from just 12 years in 2000. An analysis in the Lancet found that race, geography, and sociodemographic factors have a significant impact on lifespan, with Asian Americans now living the longest (84 years) and American Indian Alaska Natives living the shortest lives (63 years). The authors stressed the importance of disaggregating health data to prioritize efforts to “reduce the massive inequity in longevity.”

• Teladoc Virtual Sitter Upgrades: Teladoc debuted new AI capabilities for its Virtual Sitter solution geared toward assessing patients’ fall risk and increasing workforce capacity. The AI features visually detect high-risk movements and allow remote staff members to monitor up to 25% more patients while enabling faster interventions to prevent avoidable injuries. Virtual Sitter is integrated with Teladoc’s TV Pro devices and full suite of inpatient-connected care solutions.

• Catalight + Nabla: Catalight is deploying Nabla’s ambient AI assistant to enable its clinical staff to spend less time on documentation and more time delivering high quality care to patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities. After a 6-week pilot, 60% of Catalight participants reported that Nabla improved their ability to focus on patient interactions rather than administrative tasks, and the duo is now working closely together to build customized I/DD note templates for areas like occupational therapy sessions.

• The State of U.S. Health Coverage: A Commonwealth Fund survey found that nearly a quarter of U.S. adults have health coverage that leaves them underinsured, meaning that their health plan doesn’t actually allow them to access affordable care. Although 56% of working-age adults had adequate coverage over the past twelve months, 9% were uninsured, 12% had a gap in coverage at some point, and 23% were underinsured (OOP costs excluding premiums equaled 10% or more of household income).

• Engagement Improves Quality: A Health Affairs article penned by former CMS Chief Medical Officer Dr. Lee Fleisher used the success of the Kidney Care Choices model (KCC) to highlight why improving quality starts with incentivizing clinicians to get patients to take a more active role in their care. The KCC model incorporates Patient Activation Measures to assess and reward improvements in patient self-management capabilities, which led to an average increase of 9 points on the 100-point PAM scale within 6-12 months (which apparently translates to an 8.3% reduction in care costs).

• Smaller Checks, Lower Valuations: Business Insider put out a good read on the current digital health venture capital landscape, which included some solid examples of how startups are struggling to live up to expectations set during their pandemic heyday. Hundreds of digital health startups haven’t raised fresh funding since 2021, a year that saw a record-breaking $29.1B in venture capital pumped into the sector, and this year has only notched $8.2B through September as founders cut their valuations to attract smaller checks from cautious investors. 

• Cofactor AI Seed Round: Cofactor AI secured $4M in seed funding to help hospitals fight the tidal wave of claims denials by “leveling the playing field in the AI arms race between payors and providers.” The funding will support the launch of the Cofactor Denial Suite, an end-to-end platform for appealing denials that reviews clinical evidence, coding guidelines, standard of care guidelines, and peer-reviewed studies to identify discrepancies between claims and generate successful appeals.

• Board Certification Is Big Business: Physician board certification is a $12B business in the U.S., with initial board certification costing $2.9B and continuing certification another $9.1B. That’s from a new paper in the American Journal of Medicine, which also revealed that the certification process generated a $47M surplus and $839M in net balance for all ABMS member boards in 2022 (up 31% from 2014). It’s also likely a reason that the ABMS received enough backlash to prompt the cardiology societies to launch their own certifying board.

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Is your health system, rural health clinic, or federally qualified health center struggling to reach patients with obstacles to receiving in-person care? This Clear Arch Health whitepaper explores how combining RPM with VBC can help facilitate proactive interventions, address social determinants of health, and get the most out of new CMS reimbursement pathways.

Simplify RPM & Maximize Patient Engagement

Engaging patients at critical moments is essential for success. With Withings Health Nudges feature, care teams can send tailored messages to the screen of the blood pressure monitor— offering personalized support when they need it most.

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