Sign up for our weekly email for inspiring and informative stories from Israel
Donate
A new McKinsey survey of healthcare organizations—including payers, providers, and healthcare services and technology groups—found that 29% have already implemented generative AI capabilities, with additional 43% pursuing generative AI proofs of concept. About 60% of those who have implemented generative AI solutions are either already seeing a positive ROI or expect to, with clinician and clinical productivity viewed by most respondents (73%) as an area where generative AI may have the highest value.
Increasing the productivity of healthcare professionals is particularly acute in the field of mental health. As of December 2023, more than half (169 million) of the U.S. population lives in a Mental Health Professional Shortage Area, up from 118 million in 2019. 23% of all U.S. adults in 2022 had a mental illness and nearly half of them did not receive treatment. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, while the supply of adult psychiatrists is expected to decrease by 20% by 2030, the demand for their services is expected to increase by 3%, leaving a shortage of over 12,000 fully-trained psychiatrists.
A significant contributor to this challenge is post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, afflicting at present more than 300 million people worldwide. In the U.S., PTSD affects approximately 3.5% of adults every year, resulting in $232 billion in total annual expense. It is estimated that one in 11 people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with PTSD in their lifetime.
The Psychiatry Division of the Sheba Medical Center, located in Ramat Gan, Israel, has been treating PTSD for many years. The ongoing war with the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, however, has increased dramatically the number of soldiers and civilians experiencing traumatic events or situations. These includes hostages returning from captivity and their family members, wounded soldiers and civilians and their family members, some of the more than 200,000 people evacuated and displaced from their homes near Israel’s southern and northern borders, and the survivors of massacres and rocket attacks.
To better manage the new inflow of people suffering from PTSD, depression and anxiety, Sheba’s psychiatrists have developed “Liv,” an LLM-based platform that offers an interactive interface, and a personalized patient experience with voice and written communications. In an early test, Liv made the correct diagnosis 94% of the time and was slightly more accurate than the psychiatrists in assessing the severity of a condition (81% vs. 79%). The generative AI platform was also better than the doctors in determining the appropriate medication for treating patients and got high marks for the quality of its engagement.
Liv is demonstrating the value of using generative AI to improve the scale and scope of triage, enhance the quality and personalization of care, and support short-staffed healthcare systems. In the context of the global mental health crisis, generative AI platforms such as Liv could provide needed assistance not just to psychiatrists.
The 2023 Statistical Profile of Board Certified PAs by Specialty Annual Report shows that 33.4% of physician assistants or PAs see patients daily who require mental health treatment and 26.7% of PAs initiate mental health disorder treatment. “PAs are at the forefront of caring for patients with mental health concerns,” concluded the report, showing also that 59% of PAs in family practice/general practice have daily encounters with patients needing mental health treatment.
Liv is one of the many digital healthcare initiatives driven by Sheba’s home-grown innovation incubator, ARC (accelerate, redesign, collaborate) Innovation Center. Launched in 2019, ARC today boasts 100 startups in its network, startups which have raised a total of $1.37 billion as of last December. It has a number of strategic corporate partners and international collaborations with healthcare organizations for joint development, data sharing, and pilots. In addition, ARC has established a growing worldwide “future of health” community and innovation centers in Ottawa, Chicago, and London, with plans for additional ones in Bahrain, Melbourne and Nantes.
ARC is the product of a long tradition of healthcare innovation at Sheba, a tradition with a clear impact not only on the quality of care but also on the bottom line. For example, Innovalve Bio Medical—founded at Sheba in 2018—was acquired last month by Edwards Lifesciences (NYSE: EW) for an estimated $300 million. Innovalve is the developer of a minimally invasive trans-catheter mitral valve replacement device and its CEO attributed the speed of product development to the fact the company is located within the Sheba Medical Center.
The digital transformation of healthcare Sheba is leading and its pioneering use of AI do not necessarily imply replacing doctors, nurses, and physician assistants. Liv is an example of a smart and responsible use of emerging technology to assist overextended and burned-out healthcare professionals. It is not meant to substitute for the human touch, so important in all healthcare disciplines, but possibly most valuable in improving mental health. The bonds that are created between therapists and patients are particularly important for long-lasting treatment success in a country that continues to suffer from a collective trauma, a very stressful condition without an end in sight.
Reporting recently about the bonds created between dedicated therapists and injured soldiers at Sheba’s “Returning to Life” rehabilitation unit, the hospital quoted a soldier who has been at Sheba for three and half months: “I feel stronger than before I was injured. There’s something special in this country. We stand and fight for the country we love. We are one family, we are together and we are strong. October 7th touched everyone, we all lost someone, every single person. We just want to protect our country and we do whatever we can to do that.”
Published August 1, 2024, FORBES
