Words Matter. No AI is Replacing Nurses!

英伟达 and Hippocratic AI announced a partnership earlier this week that is being blown out of proportion and highlighting fundamental misunderstandings people have about the #nursing profession.

The Real Headline is about latency

The real news of the announcement is in their enablement of super-low-latency conversational interactions, in contrast to the latency witnessed in the Figure 01 & OpenAI status update video released last week (though impressive in other ways!).

Media's perpetuation of disinformation (no AI required)

Media outlets like Gizmodo.com , Business Insider , Popular Science , Futurism , Benzinga - Do Better.

Stop with the click-bait titles that confuse the public and demoralize the largest and most trusted healthcare profession in the world - #nurses. Titles like these below are inaccurate and misrepresentative not only of the profession, but of these technology companies as well, only fanning the fears people have about #AI:

They are Healthcare Agents, not Nurses

Nowhere in the original announcement from NVIDIA and Hippocratic AI do they say anything about replacing a nurse, nor do they even refer to these AI-powered agents as nurses!

They are developing empathetic AI healthcare agents to "complete low risk, non-diagnostic, patient facing tasks over the phone."

Hippocratic AI's website does not call these agents nurses either, although the images of these agents in scrubs can be a bit suggestive. Their call-out of "No AI Physicians Here" should, however, be revised to include Nurses (lest they wish to also perpetuate the under-appreciated scope of nursing practice).

The "Nurse Rating" is also confusing. It's intended to reference the 1,002 licensed US nurses that have been involved in their internal testing (Physicians were involved too, but interestingly not included in these ratings).

When can/should licensed titles be used?

Now, Hippocratic AI's CEO Munjal Shah isn't without error, when he spoke at Andreessen Horowitz of this technology (listen to the 30 second clip here ). Saying a technology can "be a pharmacist" or "be a dentist" is incredibly misleading. We need to be very specific about the "intelligence" these technologies are mimicking.

No, we will never be able to "have nurses for 10 cents an hour in our homes." Yes, we may be able to have an interactive healthcare agent that can ask questions and algorithmically "reason" with a patient, and even visually inspect a post-op wound. But I could give a list of these questions and descriptions/examples of what to look out for regarding wound healing to a family member who could perform those "tasks" as well. That doesn't require a license.

Now, the automation of having an AI-agent perform this interview task and route concerns directly and immediately to the care team is exciting and holds promise to augment and alleviate burdens on clinical staff. Nurses DO need help offloading certain tasks so we can practice at the top of our license. AI can and will be able to help us. But we must be very clear about the scope of what these agents can do and thus represent.

Professional titles like "Physician," "Pharmacist," "Dentist," and yes, even "Nurse" are regulated. Impersonating these roles is considered a felony. I think this warrants an open but serious conversation about how technology companies should be held to this standard as well, and enforced through legal action for practicing without a license. What do you think American Medical Association , American Nurses Enterprise , American Pharmacists Association , American Dental Association ?

One more thing... who's paying nurses $90/hr?

Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics , the median hourly wage of a Registered Nurse is only $39.05/hr (but we would gladly take $90/hr!). Sure, during the pandemic, desperate hospitals were paying exorbitant rates to travel agencies, but that's not the norm, and definitely not the average. We need to address appropriate nurse wages. Disinformation like this doesn't help.

To Conclude: Make sure you have the right stakeholders at the table

Someone recently asked me how to identify or vet all these technology companies. My answer...

Do they have a nurse on their leadership team?

Nurses account for 59% of the healthcare workforce. If the company doesn't have a nurse on their leadership, they are not a healthcare company. They are a technology company trying to make a buck off of healthcare.

Companies are quick to hire physicians, which is great. We need their voice and expertise. But nurses are who spend the majority of time with patients. Nurses are who understand patient journeys, healthcare operations, clinical workflows, and know how to MacGyver the crap out of anything with a piece of medical tape. If you want to improve healthcare, seek to understand some of the ways nurses are trying to hold these broken systems together.

A physician and a nurse are not the same. We are trained differently and hold a complementary set of skills and expertise. To be successful improving healthcare, you need both (not to mentioned the more specialized health professions when applicable). If you want to have the greatest chance of success, onboard a nurse to your leadership team... he or she will be able to help you avoid marketing and media collateral running amuck like this.