This post was originally published on this site.
The next time youâre due for a medical exam you may get a call from someone like Ana: a friendly voice that can help you prepare for your appointment and answer any pressing questions you might have.
With her calm, warm demeanor, Ana has been trained to put patients at ease â like many nurses across the U.S. But unlike them, she is also available to chat 24-7, in multiple languages, from Hindi to Haitian Creole.
Thatâs because Ana isnât human, but an artificial intelligence program created by Hippocratic AI, one of a number of new companies offering ways to automate time-consuming tasks usually performed by nurses and medical assistants.
Itâs the most visible sign of AIâs inroads into health care, where hundreds of hospitals are using increasingly sophisticated computer programs to monitor patientsâ vital signs, flag emergency situations and trigger step-by-step action plans for care â jobs that were all previously handled by nurses and other health professionals.
Hospitals say AI is helping their nurses work more efficiently while addressing burnout and understaffing. But nursing unions argue that this poorly understood technology is overriding nursesâ expertise and degrading the quality of care patients receive.
âHospitals have been waiting for the moment when they have something that appears to have enough legitimacy to replace nurses,â said Michelle Mahon of National Nurses United. âThe entire ecosystem is designed to automate, de-skill and ultimately replace caregivers.â
This March 2025 image from the website of artificial intelligence company Xoltar, shows two of of their demonstration avatars for conducting video calls with patients. (Xoltar via AP)
Mahonâs group, the largest nursing union in the U.S., has helped organize more than 20 demonstrations at hospitals across the country, pushing for the right to have say in how AI can be used â and protection from discipline if they decide to disregard automated advice. The group raised new alarms in January when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the incoming health secretary, suggested AI nurses âas good as any doctorâ could help deliver care in rural areas. On Friday, Dr. Mehmet Oz, whoâs been nominated to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, said he believes AI can âliberate doctors and nurses from all the paperwork.â
Hippocratic AI initially promoted a rate of $9 an hour for its AI assistants, compared with about $40 an hour for a registered nurse. It has since dropped that language, instead touting its services and seeking to assure customers that they have been carefully tested. The company did not grant requests for an interview.
AI in the hospital can generate false alarms and dangerous advice
Hospitals have been experimenting for years with technology designed to improve care and streamline costs, including sensors, microphones and motion-sensing cameras. Now that data is being linked with electronic medical records and analyzed in an effort to predict medical problems and direct nursesâ care â sometimes before theyâve evaluated the patient themselves.
In this photo provided by National Nurses United, nurses hold a rally in San Francisco on April 22, 2024, to highlight safety concerns about using artificial intelligence in health care. (National Nurses United via AP)
Adam Hart was working in the emergency room at Dignity Health in Henderson, Nevada, when the hospitalâs computer system flagged a newly arrived patient for sepsis, a life-threatening reaction to infection. Under the hospitalâs protocol, he was supposed to immediately administer a large dose of IV fluids. But after further examination, Hart determined that he was treating a dialysis patient, or someone with kidney failure. Such patients have to be carefully managed to avoid overloading their kidneys with fluid.
Hart raised his concern with the supervising nurse but was told to just follow the standard protocol. Only after a nearby physician intervened did the patient instead begin to receive a slow infusion of IV fluids.
âYou need to keep your thinking cap onâ thatâs why youâre being paid as a nurse,â Hart said. âTurning over our thought processes to these devices is reckless and dangerous.â
Hart and other nurses say they understand the goal of AI: to make it easier for nurses to monitor multiple patients and quickly respond to problems. But the reality is often a barrage of false alarms, sometimes erroneously flagging basic bodily functions â such as a patient having a bowel movement â as an emergency.
In this photo provided by National Nurses United, Melissa Beebe, foreground, and other nurses hold a rally in San Francisco on April 22, 2024, to highlight safety concerns about using artificial intelligence in health care. (National Nurses United via AP)
âYouâre trying to focus on your work but then youâre getting all these distracting alerts that may or may not mean something,â said Melissa Beebe, a cancer nurse at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. âItâs hard to even tell when itâs accurate and when itâs not because there are so many false alarms.â
Can AI help in the hospital?
Even the most sophisticated technology will miss will miss signs that nurses routinely pick up on, such as facial expressions and odors, notes Michelle Collins, dean of Loyola Universityâs College of Nursing. But people arenât perfect either.
âIt would be foolish to turn our back on this completely,â Collins said. âWe should embrace what it can do to augment our care, but we should also be careful it doesnât replace the human element.â
More than 100,000 nurses left the workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to one estimate, the biggest staffing drop in 40 years. As the U.S. population ages and nurses retire, the U.S. government estimates there will be more than 190,000 new openings for nurses every year through 2032.
Faced with this trend, hospital administrators see AI filling a vital role: not taking over care, but helping nurses and doctors gather information and communicate with patients.
âSometimes they are talking to a human and sometimes theyâre notâ
At the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences in Little Rock, staffers need to make hundreds of calls every week to prepare patients for surgery. Nurses confirm information about prescriptions, heart conditions and other issues â like sleep apnea â that must be carefully reviewed before anesthesia.
The problem: many patients only answer their phones in the evening, usually between dinner and their childrenâs bedtime.
âSo what we need to do is find a way to call several hundred people in a 120-minute window — but I really donât want to pay my staff overtime to do so,â said Dr. Joseph Sanford, who oversees the centerâs health IT.
Since January, the hospital has used an AI assistant from Qventus to contact patients and health providers, send and receive medical records and summarize their contents for human staffers. Qventus says 115 hospitals are using its technology, which aims to boost hospital earnings through quicker surgical turnarounds, fewer cancellations and reduced burnout.
Each call begins with the program identifying itself as an AI assistant.
âWe always want to be fully transparent with our patients that sometimes they are talking to a human and sometimes theyâre not,â Sanford said.
While companies like Qventus are providing an administrative service, other AI developers see a bigger role for their technology.
Israeli startup Xoltar specializes in humanlike avatars that conduct video calls with patients. The company is working with the Mayo Clinic on an AI assistant that teaches patients cognitive techniques for managing chronic pain. The company is also developing an avatar to help smokers quit. In early testing, patients have spent about 14 minutes talking to the program, which can pickup on facial expressions, body language and other cues, according to Xoltar.
Nursing experts who study AI say such programs may work for people who are relatively healthy and proactive about their care. But thatâs not most people in the health system.
âItâs the very sick who are taking up the bulk of health care in the U.S. and whether or not chatbots are positioned for those folks is something we really have to consider,â said Roschelle Fritz of the University of California Davis School of Nursing.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Instituteâs Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.