Shaping a New Era of Patient-Centered Care, with Collaborative Intelligence

There’s a phrase many of us learn early in our medical training: “You only see what you look for.” As a doctor, you're trained to look for certain things. But what about the things you’re?not?looking for? ?That’s one area where AI can be incredibly impactful, by augmenting our skills. It allows us to harness data and insights in ways that make us humans smarter, more effective and more efficient at what we do.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the transformative power of collaborative intelligence—the combination of computing power with human intelligence—and its growing role empowering greater patient agency and outcomes.? Over the past several weeks, I’ve been fortunate to discuss this topic with Dr. Ami Bhatt, Chief Innovation Officer at the American College of Cardiology and an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. Below, I’ve shared three key takeaways from our recent panels together:?

1. Collaborative intelligence is accelerating greater personalization in care.

At Teladoc Health, we believe care should be responsive to an individual's unique behaviors, beliefs and attitudes, as well as their social and cultural factors. Our care model was built to take care of the whole person, not an isolated condition. We help people understand the independent and interconnected roles of lifestyle factors like nutrition, activity, sleep, and stress on health, so that they can be empowered to manage these factors to optimize health. This requires a level of personalization that simply wouldn’t be possible without collaborative intelligence.

Every day, we take data gathered across millions of health journeys and use collaborative intelligence to leverage that information to glean actionable insights for consumers, clinicians and clients. Can you imagine what it would take to have a human sort through the vast volume and variety of data, and additionally juxtapose them to derive highly nuanced insights that can predict, prevent, and manage health conditions? Collaborative intelligence is what makes it possible for us to deliver hyper-personalization, at scale.

2. Know your data inputs.

During our discussion,?Dr. Bhatt defined collaborative intelligence as “the use of advanced analytics and computing power, with an understanding that we are responsible for the data it is offered and fair interpretation of its outputs, with the intention of together becoming more intelligent.” It’s a definition that resonates with me because it makes explicit our?own?responsibility as providers utilizing these tools.

Using data?without?the appropriate context can be both ineffective and damaging—the dangers of algorithmic bias are?well-documented. To have the maximum positive impact, we need to make sure we truly understand the data inputs used in these models.

3. AI will not replace clinicians, but it will give us valuable new teammates.

AI isn’t going to diagnose a patient, but the tools it can give clinicians to support earlier detection of disease are a game-changer. These tools, used correctly, can help unravel mysteries and unlock knowledge in profound ways. They can help us see what we are not yet looking for. While AI won’t replace clinicians, it’s clear clinicians leveraging AI will be more successful in the future than those who don’t. ?By integrating AI as a part of our overall care model, not only do we avoid risks, but we generate superior value through the combination of human and machine intelligence.

I’d love to hear from others about how collaborative intelligence is changing the ways you approach health and care. ?

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