Einstein Copilot for Healthcare

Einstein Copilot for Healthcare – Salesforce has introduced a new AI-powered healthcare assistant within its CRM system, marking its latest move to expand into the healthcare industry. As AI development accelerates, tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services, and Salesforce are capitalizing on the opportunity to integrate AI and cloud technologies into healthcare to streamline administrative and operational tasks.

Salesforce’s healthcare-specific AI tool, Einstein Copilot, is a conversational assistant that leverages an organization’s private data to provide relevant responses. Einstein Copilot enables healthcare providers and care teams to digitally capture and summarize information from both clinical and nonclinical sources, update patient records, and automate manual workflows.

Key Features of Einstein Copilot

Providers can use Einstein Copilot to generate patient summaries that include medications, diagnoses, social determinants, assessments, clinical service requests, and care gaps. A care manager can also ask the assistant to find an in-network provider based on location, specialty, and insurance coverage, and auto-fill referral forms using natural language prompts.

The AI assistant can also trigger workflows for tasks such as sending referrals, scheduling appointments, and updating care plans. Salesforce expects Einstein Copilot to be HIPAA-compliant by summer 2024, with Copilot: Health Actions slated for general availability in winter 2024.

Digitizing Health Assessments

Salesforce is adding a feature called Assessment Generation that allows healthcare organizations to digitize standardized health assessments. These can be automatically populated into Salesforce Health Cloud, filled out electronically, and tracked for progress over time.

Reducing Administrative Waste

Salesforce cites research from McKinsey & Co. showing that administrative costs account for nearly a quarter of U.S. healthcare spending, with a potential savings of up to $320 billion. By integrating AI and CRM tools, Salesforce aims to reduce the operational burden on healthcare providers and improve patient outcomes.

Amit Khanna, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Health at Salesforce, highlighted the value of these innovations: “These new data, AI, and CRM features reduce the administrative and operational burden for healthcare providers, leading to better outcomes for patients. With Salesforce’s trusted AI, healthcare organizations excited about generative AI—but wary of clinical and security concerns—can confidently integrate these innovations into their workflows.”

Early Adopters and Impact

Healthcare providers including Baptist Health South Florida and HarmonyCares are already leveraging Salesforce to personalize patient interactions and create unified patient views. HarmonyCares, which operates across 14 states with over 150 primary care providers, has used Salesforce’s AI-driven field service platform to streamline patient scheduling. The company reported a 50% increase in self-scheduling efficiency since adopting the platform and plans to expand its use of Salesforce Health Cloud for care management and engagement.

Kristin Darby, Chief Information Officer at HarmonyCares, emphasized the benefits of AI in healthcare: “AI will dramatically improve our ability to quickly synthesize patient needs and preferences, enabling us to offer a more personalized experience with greater accuracy.”

However, the integration of AI in healthcare is not without skepticism. A recent survey revealed that 69% of individuals are uncomfortable with AI being used to diagnose them, though more than half are open to its use in nonclinical tasks like scheduling and billing.

Salesforce’s Healthcare Journey

Salesforce first launched Health Cloud in 2015 to help providers manage patients by aggregating data from electronic medical records, devices, and wearables. In 2022, the company expanded this offering with Customer 360 for Health, a unified platform that combines real-time data from Data Cloud, Einstein AI, and automation tools like Flow to streamline processes such as prior authorizations, intake, and patient scheduling.