The phrase “AI in healthcare” often brings to mind back-office tasks, such as optimizing schedules, automating billing, or managing administrative workflows. While those AI-enabled applications are important, they barely scratch the surface of AI’s potential. The most exciting transformations aren’t happening on a spreadsheet but at the patient’s bedside and in the hands of children learning to manage their health. Let’s explore two profoundly human-centered AI tools that are already reshaping what’s possible in patient care.
Learning through play: The AI-powered game for kids with diabetes
For a child diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, learning about their condition and managing it can be overwhelming. It’s a world of new information, from understanding blood sugar levels to making smart food choices. A team at Harvard University realized that the best way to teach kids is often through play.
They developed an educational video game that uses the power of generative AI to create a personalized learning experience. Instead of just reading pamphlets or listening to explanations, children can interact with in-game characters who hold realistic, AI-powered conversations. The game teaches them about their condition, quizzes them on what they’ve learned, and even shows them images of culturally relevant foods to help them understand their dietary needs.
A tool like this offers incredible benefits:
- Improved patient education and adherence – When children are engaged and understand their condition better, they are more likely to follow their treatment plans, which can result in better long-term health outcomes.
- Personalized learning at scale – The AI can tailor conversations and lessons to each child’s individual needs and learning pace, providing a level of personalization that traditional methods rarely achieve.
- Reduced burden on clinical staff – While not a replacement for medical advice, the game can handle a significant portion of the foundational education, freeing up nurses and doctors to focus on more complex aspects of care.
- Increased patient and family engagement – A fun and interactive tool can make the entire family more engaged in the child’s care.
A “crystal ball” for doctors: Finding answers in patient data
Imagine a doctor treating a patient with a rare and complex condition. They know that somewhere in the hospital’s vast archives of patient records, there are clues from past cases that could help them make the best decision for the patient in front of them. The problem is that finding those clues is like searching for a needle in a haystack.
At Boston Children’s Hospital, they’ve built a solution: a hybrid AI-powered search engine. It’s a specialized search tool for medical records that allows doctors to ask plain-language questions and instantly search through years of historical patient data. It can sift through both structured data (e.g., lab results) and unstructured data (e.g., doctor’s notes) to find patients with similar conditions and see what treatments worked, what didn’t, and what the outcomes were.
The benefits of this technology are transformative:
- Data-driven clinical decisions – Doctors can make more informed decisions at the bedside by quickly accessing evidence from past cases, essentially learning from the collective experience of the entire hospital.
- Improved treatment for complex cases – For rare diseases or unusual cases, this tool can provide invaluable insights that would otherwise be lost in the data, which could lead to better patient outcomes.
- Faster and more accurate research – The ability to quickly find and group patients with specific criteria (i.e., creating patient cohorts) dramatically speeds up clinical research and the process of discovering new treatment strategies.
- Personalized treatment planning – By understanding the potential treatment responses of similar patients, doctors can develop more personalized and effective treatment plans for their current patients.
These two examples show that the most exciting AI applications in healthcare are the ones that are deeply human. They are about empowering patients, supporting doctors, and ultimately, using technology to deliver better, more personalized care.
For any healthcare organization looking to the future, the question isn’t if you should adopt AI, but how you can use it to solve the real-world challenges you and your patients face every day. If you want to learn more about leveraging AI and other technologies in healthcare, contact our experts today.
