With the arrival of artificial intelligence (AI), programs providing individualized care and recommendations are poised to change the face of healthcare in the public sector and within employee wellness programs. While it’s likely that you’re already utilizing some AI-powered technology, there’s more on its way, and over the coming months and years, you’ll see some significant changes in how you manage your employee’s health and wellness programs.
Are You Already Using AI?
Most employers and their employees already use AI-driven programs, even if they don’t realize it. Smartphones, GPS maps, facial recognition, ChatGPT, smartwatches, autocorrect, robotic surgery, fraud prevention services, search engine recommendations, chatbots, and even social media all leverage AI to power their processes and have been doing so for quite some time. These programs slowly crept into our lives, and while we hardly noticed, we became entirely dependent upon them rather quickly. It’s not shocking that the healthcare industry has now jumped on the bandwagon and wants to leverage the benefits.
Is this a good thing?
Opposed to the institution of any AI in healthcare, AI skeptics voice concerns about privacy, medical errors, and job loss.
Privacy
AI’s use of algorithms and programming expose it to several privacy challenges. Its ability to crawl through data and organize it digitally according to a user’s request can quickly lead to unauthorized disclosures of information. This process leaves healthcare organizations and companies utilizing AI in their wellness programs open to probes by outside parties, adding a layer of necessary and costly security to prevent it.
While most programs dealing with healthcare information are programmed to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), issues still arise. A federal judge recently dismissed a lawsuit regarding AI and healthcare privacy breaches. The plaintiff claimed that while all official identifiers were removed from his record (name, date of birth) when Google used it to create healthcare AI tools, it was still possible to identify him by the vast array of other data that it utilized, such as location, diagnosis and date of stay. The lengthy case shows that patients will have even less control over their data and its use in an AI-powered world.
Ethics & Errors
Medical errors made by AI programs, sometimes due to bias, are a significant concern within the medical sector. Harvard University found that algorithmic bias was likely to lead to errors due to unequal information input from different races and ethnic groups. When an AI program receives minimal information from a particular group, its ability to address intricate differences within that data diminishes. Allowing the program to make recommendations for an individual’s healthcare based on biased information is dangerous and unethical, and more work will need to be done within the programming before its accuracy is dependable across all demographics. Until then, it remains necessary for a qualified professional to verify AI’s responses and assistance before applying recommendations to the individual.
Job Loss
A 2018 Gallup poll showed that 73% of Americans believe artificial intelligence will lead to more job loss than job creation. Unfortunately, the recent Challenger Report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. shows that they’re right, with nearly 4,000 jobs lost in May 2023 alone due to AI replacement. The numbers, likely calculated by AI, only add to employees’ anxiety as they wait for news within their own industry. Employers must address these concerns often and directly to calm fears within their workforce.
What can AI do for Employee Health and Wellness?
AI integration in employee healthcare includes decision-making, cost and resource analysis, and health monitoring. According to Anthem, these three areas are likely to be most utilized as innovations in AI continue to improve.
Decision-Making
Stratus HR, a human resource outsourcing company, states that even a company with less than 25 employees should employ a full-time HR representative. For every 50 additional employees, management should add another. Full-time HR representatives are costly, yet many HR representatives need help keeping up with the information employees need to access.
Utilizing AI programs such as Tango’s Decision Assist, employers can access information related to their current benefits programs and use specialty enrollment programs that recommend the best health plans based on how the employee answers a series of questions. The program allows the employees to calculate their costs based on their expectations within the health plan and eases the burden of human resources responsibility.
Health Monitoring
A significant challenge in employee health programs is that each employee is vastly different. They come from diverse backgrounds, have individual health goals, and experience varying health challenges. Utilizing AI, your employee wellness initiatives can be company-wide and specific simultaneously. How? Let’s look at just a few options.
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- Health at Scale partnered with Walmart to create an AI-driven tool for recommending the most appropriate provider for an employee seeking medical procedures. The personalized recommendations participate with the employee’s health plan, and the tool considers the employee’s needs, location, and care history when sorting selections.
- Burnalong created a total-wellness program for employers that offers wellness classes on stress reduction, nutrition, anxiety management, pain management, pre-and post-partum support, and other wellness topics. Employee engagement challenges and live events unite employees, while AI technology provides personalized recommendations and tracking dependent on the employee’s participation.
- Omada offers an AI-driven, individualized approach to helping employees manage cardiometabolic conditions such as prediabetes, diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and hypertension through virtual care and recommendations.
Mental Health
When discussing the field of employee health, we must address mental well-being. The World Health Organization (WHO) has published some staggering statistics regarding workplace mental health. As of 2022, they estimated that 12 billion working days are lost yearly due to depression and anxiety, with lost productivity leading to a $1 trillion/annual loss. Caring for your workforce’s mental well-being is good for both the employee and the employer. Fortunately, there are AI-powered solutions for this very problem.
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- Calm for Business offers employees mental health content and wellness tools through their meditation and mindfulness app. Tools are also available to gauge employee participation and utilization of the app so employers know what is working for them.
- Lyra offers employers a full-service mental health option where employees receive personalized care recommendations, book in-person and virtual care appointments, access lessons and exercises, and track progress. Employers can link their Lyra service with Artemis Health and see a complete data analysis of the programs that benefit their employees the most and insights into the associated cost savings.
Cost/Resource Analysis
Anthem notes that AI-powered plan apps such as Sydney Health already provide cost analysis for employees who utilize the technology. United Healthcare provides a similar tool, allowing employees to estimate the cost of upcoming procedures, view deductibles and expenses and view their Health Savings Account (HSA) balances. What about employers, however? Does AI have a place in cost and resource analysis on the back end? Definitely. Analytics programs such as WorkPartners utilize employee data to identify individuals or groups within your organization that require extra health management and integrate this data to provide insight into cost, lost time and productivity, and employee health trends.
What’s next?
Artificial intelligence is developing at an unprecedented pace. Programs available today are just the start of what we’ll see in the future. As technology advances, each employer’s ability to monitor the health of their workforce and offer individualized solutions will grow concurrently with data breaches and algorithmic bias risks. Concerns are valid, but the real question is whether you’ll stay on top of advances or fall behind and risk missing out on the benefits of new healthcare technology.
Tammy McKinney, RN, creator of HelpfulHospiceNurse, is a healthcare writer and seasoned registered nurse. With experience in acute care, long-term care, rehabilitation, drug & alcohol, and hospice & palliative care, she combines her medical understanding with her love for writing to educate and inform the public on various health-related topics. You can view a snippet of her portfolio here or contact her directly on LinkedIn!
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