Virtua Health Launches AI Healthcare Partnership With Care.ai

Healthcare system Virtua Health is going virtual with Care.ai.

Via a partnership between the companies, Care.ai’s Virtual Care solutions will be integrated throughout the Virtua system, beginning with Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, New Jersey, according to a Thursday (Feb. 15) press release.

“Health systems are facing unprecedented clinician workforce shortages, emphasizing the crucial need to enhance the productivity and presence of care teams with technology that is proven to easily scale,” Care.ai CEO and founder Chakri Toleti said in the release.

The collaboration began in December when Our Lady launched a pilot Virtual Nurse program in its medical-surgical unit that lets bedside and remote nurses work in tandem to deliver patient care. The Virtual Nurse communicates with patients through a secure, two-way optical camera and lets patients’ family members take part in video calls from offsite.

“The larger collaboration is set to optimize patient care, improve the patient and provider experience, and amplify clinician capabilities of both on-site and virtual care teams,” the release said. “Physicians, nurses and staff are united by the same comprehensive platform, streamlining a wide array of patient care tasks, from routine admit and discharge activities to documentation, fall prevention and clinician safety.”

The addition of Care.ai’s artificial intelligence-driven solutions into the Virtua system is happening as the generative AI healthcare market is projected to reach $22 billion by 2032.

As PYMNTS wrote last year, this presents several possibilities for better patient care, diagnosis accuracy and treatment outcomes.

“Many of the latest AI innovations, including those designed to help doctors glean insights from healthcare data and allow users to find accurate clinical information more efficiently, are meant to help put clinician ‘pajama time’ — the time spent on paperwork each night — to bed,” the December report said. “These problems typically cost providers significant amounts of time and resources, and a variety of point-solution were brought to market this year to address them.”

More recently, PYMNTS examined the way the technology has been increasingly used to improve the patient experience.

For example, there’s Artsight, which last month made the news for raising $42 billion, and which focuses on taking away friction from the patient-caregiver relationship with AI, creating what it calls a “smart hospital.”

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