By Alice Chambers |
The Chi Mei Medical Center in Taiwan is serving double the amount of patients per day with help from a generative AI assistant built on Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service.
Two-thirds of the pharmacists at the centre are using A+ Pharmacist copilot to summarise patient’s clinical information from multiple databases including medication lists, surgical records, allergy history, lab tests, and nursing, medical and surgical records.
According to Hui-Chen Su, head of the pharmacy department at Chi Medi Medical Center, the copilot means one pharmacist can see 30 patients a day rather than 15. It also “allows pharmacists more time to care for patients with complex needs,” she said in a Microsoft blog post.
The doctors and nurses at Chi Mei Medical Center are using copilots to enhance patient care (image credit: Billy H. C. Kwok, Microsoft)
A+ Pharmacist is one of multiple copilots that the centre has rolled out across different departments in November 2023. For example, one-third of its doctors use generative AI to generate medical reports, half of its nurses use it to produce reports for shift changes and two-thirds of its nutritionists use it to help create dietary recommendations.
Now, two-thirds of Chi Mei’s 95 pharmacists are using a copilot, half of approximately 2,000 nurses and one-third of 700 doctors.
“We found it [generative AI] cannot only reduce workload but also help ensure patient safety,” said Dr Hung-Jung Lin, chief executive of Chi Mei. “In the future, we plan to give each medical professional a digital assistant.”