The Convergence of Artificial Intelligence and Telehealth

Beginning this century, telehealth has become part of the digital transformation of healthcare. The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the delivery of healthcare from traditional means to a virtual-first strategy.
Health systems are now investing heavily in this cost-effective technology which can expand their presence, better leverage their clinical teams, and provide easier and safer access to care for patients. Because telehealth requires the transmission of a digital medium, it is also uniquely positioned to benefit from AI.
Technology has progressed to a point where telehealth is not merely a proxy for in-person care, but in certain ways can improve the care that is delivered. The combination of AI and telehealth can clearly provide specific benefits to the healthcare clinician’s capabilities, as well as efficiency. New diagnostic abilities, smart recommendations, and augmented AI tools will empower physicians to perform clinical care like never before.
The path forward is to digitize and scale AI enabled telehealth throughout the patient care journey. Once AI and telehealth are embraced as a common piece of digital health technology, we will be able to continually create better, safer, and easier healthcare at a cost our society can afford.