by Melissa Boyer | Jan 3, 2019 | Engineering, Resources, Uncategorized
If you missed part one in the series, you can start here (Machine Learning Basics Part 1: An Overview).
Regression:
Common real-world problems that are addressed with regression models are predicting housing values, financial forecasting, and predicting travel commute times. Regression models can have a single input feature, referred to as univariate, or multiple input features, referred to as multivariate. When evaluating a regression model, performance is determined by calculating the Mean squared error (MSE) cost function. MSE is the average of the squared errors of each data point from the hypothesis, or simply how far each prediction was from the desired outcome. A model that has a high MSE cost function fits the training data poorly and should be revised.
A visual representation of MSE:
In the image above,1 the actual data point values are represented by red dots. The hypothesis, which is used to make any predictions on future data, is represented by the blue line. The difference between the two is indicated by the green lines. These green lines are used to compute MSE and evaluate the strength of the model’s predictions.
Regression Problem Examples:
- Given BMI, current weight, activity level, gender, and calorie intake, predict future weight.
- Given calorie intake, fitness level, and family history, predict percent probability of heart disease.
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Commonly Used Regression Models:
Linear Regression: This is a model that represents the relationship between one or more input variables and a linear scalar response. Scalar refers to a single real number.
Ridge Regression: This is a linear regression model that incorporates a regularization term to prevent overfitting. If the regularization term (𝝰) is set to 0, ridge regression acts as simple linear regression. Note that data must be scaled before performing ridge regression.
Lasso Regression: Lasso is an abbreviation for least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression. Similar to ridge regression, lasso regression includes a regularization term. One benefit to using lasso regression is that it tends to set the weights of the least important features to zero, effectively performing feature selection.2 You can implement lasso regression in Sci-kit Learn using the built-in model library.
Elastic Net: This model uses a regularization term that is a mix of both ridge and lasso regularization terms. By setting r=0 the model behaves as a ridge regression, and setting r=1 makes it behave like a lasso regression. This additional flexibility in customizing regularization can provide the benefits of both models.2 Implement elastic net in Sci-kit Learn using the built in model library. Select an alpha value to control regularization and an l1_ratio to set the mix ratio r.
Classification: Classification problems predict a class. They can also return a probability value, which is then used to determine the class most likely to be correct. For classification problems, model performance is determined by calculating accuracy.
model accuracy = correct predictions / total predictions * 100
Classification Problem Examples: Classification has its benefits for predictions in the healthcare industry.For example, given a dataset with features including glucose levels, pregnancies, blood pressure, skin thickness, insulin, and BMI, predictions can be made on the likelihood of the onset of diabetes. Because this prediction should be a 0 or 1, it is considered a binary classification problem.
Commonly Used Classification Models:
Logistic Regression: This is a model that uses a regression algorithm, but is most often used for classification problems since its output can be used to determine the probability of belonging to a certain class.2 Logistic regression uses the sigmoid function to output a value between 0 and 1. If the probability is >= 0.5 that an instance is in the positive class (represented by a 1), the model predicts 1. Otherwise, it predicts 0.
Softmax Regression: This is a logistic regression model that can support multiple classes. Softmax predicts the class with the highest estimated probability. It can only be used when classes are mutually exclusive.2
Naive Bayes: This is a classification system that assumes that the value of a feature is independent from the value of any other feature and ignores any possible correlations between features in making predictions. The model then predicts the class with the highest probability.4
Support Vector Machines (SVM): This is a classification system that identifies a decision border, or hyperplane, as wide as possible between class types and predicts class based on the side of the border that any point falls on. This system does not use probability to assign a class label. SVM models can be fine-tuned by adjusting kernel, regularization, gamma, and margin. We will explore these hyperparameters further in an upcoming blog post focused solely on SVM. Note that SVM can also be used to perform regression tasks.
Decision Trees and Random Forests: A decision tree is a model that separates data into branches by asking a binary question at each fork. For example, in a fruit classification problem one tree fork could ask if a fruit is red. Each fruit instance would either go to one branch for yes or the other for no. At the end of each branch is a leaf with all of the training instances that followed the same decision path. The common problem of overfitting can often be avoided by combining multiple trees into a random forest and taking the prediction from the tree with the highest probability of accuracy.
Neural Networks (NN): This is a model composed of layers of connected nodes. The model takes information in via an input layer and passes it through one or more hidden layers composed of nodes. These nodes are activated by their input, make some determination, and generate output for the next layer of nodes. Connections between nodes have edges, which have a weight that can be adjusted to influence learning. A bias term can also be added to the edges to create a threshold theta (𝛉), which is customizable and determines if the node’s output will continue to the next layer of nodes. The final layer is the output layer, which generates class probabilities and makes a final prediction. When a NN has two or more hidden layers, it’s called a deep neural network. There are multiple types of neural networks and we will explore this in more detail in later blog posts.
K-nearest Neighbor: This model evaluates a new data point by its proximity to training data points and assigns a class based on the majority class of its closest neighbors as determined by feature similarity. K is an integer set when the model is built and determines how far out the model should look for neighbors. The boundary circle is set when it includes k neighbors.
by Jennifer Comisford | Dec 18, 2018 | Uncategorized
Over the past two decades, the use of software systems has lead to a paradigm shift in healthcare, particularly in the United States. Medical records went digital at a rapid rate, driven in large part by federal mandates (e.g. the American Reinvestment & Recovery Act pushing “meaningful use” of electronic health records). As the industry responded to the operational and legislative incentives to digitize medical records, a number of EMR (Electronic Medical Record) systems emerged to meet demands. Overall, this push towards a digital age in medical record keeping has been a success; over 95% of all hospitals in the United States have certified Health IT according to The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
While this shift to digital had significant benefits, it was not without its drawbacks. One of the side effects of the switch to digital was that, as a whole staff now often spends more time at a PC than with patients. This is due in large part to one of the main problems in healthcare: the lack of interoperability between systems. Lack of interoperability means that the various systems in a healthcare environment are often unable to communicate with one another in an efficient and scalable manner This leads to significant friction and manual action in business processes.
EMR systems were designed to be secure and reliable means of storing and recording sensitive patient data. Interoperability wasn’t a primary requirement when these systems were designed, but with the benefit of hindsight, we can now see the shift to digital record keeping and lack of EMR interoperability has created a groundswell of administrative workloads across the organization. An organization full of siloed systems leads to an environment where data transfers between systems can become tedious, time-consuming, and costly. In this piece, we will review this problem in more detail and dive into one of the most promising solutions: Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Understanding the impact of poor interoperability
In modern healthcare facilities, it is a given that many employees with clinical skills like nurses and technicians will spend a non-trivial amount of time moving data from one format or system to another. Humans now effectively act as data routers and processes between discrete systems, moving from one interface to another to type and retype data. Not only does this keep them away from patients, it significantly contributes to increased administrative costs.
To help quantify the astounding administrative costs impacting healthcare in the United States, check out the statistics cited in this New York Times article. The article cites research that puts the administrative cost of healthcare in the U.S. higher than anywhere else in the world and data that indicates that in the U.S. administrative costs account for over 25% of healthcare spending while our neighbor to the North, Canada, spends about 12% of their healthcare dollars on administration.
This isn’t to say that the shift in how data is input into EMR systems will solve all of the nation’s healthcare spending woes, or even to suggest that the makers of EMR software are at fault (after all, they built solutions based on market demands and requirements). The point here is that today this is an area where healthcare organizations have significant bottlenecks and inefficiencies in business processes. Viewed differently, given the right solution, this is an opportunity for healthcare businesses to reduce cost and drive down overhead.
As we will see, automated intelligence is an ideal way to address many of these bottlenecks and organizations that adopt AI to help optimize their work processes can take advantage of this opportunity. In so doing, they will be able to save a significant amount of time and money, while also freeing up staff to do the more important and creative work humans excel at. The takeaway here is this is one of the health care issues we can solve pragmatically without the need for legislators to take action (which can always be a roadblock when dealing with problems within healthcare).
Understanding how AI can solve interoperability issues with healthcare today
The problem is clear, but the solution is still up for debate. Some have suggested that an overhaul of systems is required. Creating an “Internet for Healthcare” that enables secure, reliable, and fast data exchanges is the ideal for many. However, there is some concern that such a “scorched Earth” approach goes too far and creates more of an administrative hassle than it is worth. Agreeing to standards and implementing entirely new systems at scale, while also meeting the stringent requirements healthcare organizations must adhere to (e.g. HIPAA) while taking a significant amount of time, effort, and coordination.
A solution that is able to work with current systems would enable healthcare organizations to continue to leverage many of the trusted and secure EMRs they are comfortable with today, while still resolving the interoperability problem. Given that, AI is uniquely capable of resolving these challenges and helping to address one of the biggest issues in healthcare. One of the ideal use cases for intelligent automation technologies like AI and RPA (Robotic Process Automation) is one where humans are tasked with high-volume work that is done in s similar way every time. Offloading these tasks to software enables human workers to focus more time on the complex and creative work they should be focused on (e.g. caring for patients), while also increasing speed and reducing exposure to human error.
The counterargument some make to leveraging AI in healthcare is that APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) or HL7 (Health Level Seven) data streams aren’t always readily available or require complex development work to feed into an AI software. However, when AI is built with the idea in mind of being able to pass the Turing Test for AI (as mentioned in our Artificial Intelligence 101 article), these APIs and HL7 feeds aren’t required. AI is capable of using the same user interfaces (UIs) a human would use to complete the task. This leads to a new paradigm where AI is treated as an employee. For example, in the “onboarding” of our AI Olive, often Olive can be assigned user accounts and email addresses much in the same way a new employee would.
This creates a scenario where healthcare organizations are able to continue to leverage existing systems, while still freeing up human capital to focus on core healthcare functions like patient care. This helps to drive down costs, increase efficiency & speed in administrative processes, and improve patient satisfaction. In short, while there is a myriad of current problems in healthcare, you can resolve many of your interoperability problems with AI.
Conceptualizing the benefits of AI to healthcare administration
To help conceptualize the power of AI to healthcare administration, let’s walk through a real-world example, eligibility checks, and compare the manual process to Olive. Manual eligibility checks are often time-consuming and prone to human error, with technical errors causing 61% of initial medical billing denials for eligibility. This is an excellent microcosm for how many small errors can scale to create bigger issues affecting healthcare providers. There are multiple disjointed systems involved in completing a single eligibility check and if you are having a human go through these processes repeatedly, you can expect a typo or oversight fairly regularly.
Looking at the AI approach with Olive, she will:
- Automatically pull patient information from the existing HER
- Use the information to check the same eligibility portals a human would
- Report the information back for review
- Make recommendations
This means that the mundane, repetitive tasks associated with eligibility checks are now quickly completed by a software that is significantly less typo-prone than a human, and processing of eligibility is sped up not only due to less technical errors, but also because AI can work 24/7. Using this example, you can now see how AI can be leveraged to elegantly resolve many of the problems in healthcare today.
Conclusion: AI helps optimize healthcare administration
While asking anyone in the industry “what are some health care issues?” will often lead to a laundry list of healthcare problems, not all of those problems have readily apparent, pragmatic solutions. Fortunately, the EHR interoperability challenges faced by healthcare organizations do have a solution that can be implemented today in the form of AI that is built specifically for the healthcare industry. By leveraging AI, healthcare organizations can improve work processes, minimize human error, decrease turnaround times, lower expenses, and free up human resources to focus on more valuable work like patient care.
Here at Olive, we are dedicated to building world-class automated intelligence solutions specifically designed to solve the unique challenges facing the healthcare industry. If you have questions about how AI can help drive your healthcare business forward, please contact us today to work with our team of automation experts.
by Jennifer Comisford | Dec 18, 2018 | Uncategorized
As a healthcare business professional, what are the biggest benefits of intelligent process automation to your business? If you have never considered that question, then you may be missing out on a myriad of potential benefits. The use cases for it in healthcare businesses are seemingly endless. Given that these technologies are ideal for processes that are high-volume and similar every time, the healthcare industry, with its wide variety of administrative tasks taking up valuable human time, is a prime candidate to leverage the power of automation.
In this article, we will dive into the details of some of the more common intelligent process automation technologies and 3 specific benefits intelligent process automation can bring to the healthcare businesses.
Explaining Process Automation & RPA
Before we dive into the specific benefits intelligent process automation can bring to your healthcare business, let’s dive into some of the nuts and bolts of process automation and RPA (Robotic Process Automation).
What is Process Automation?
Process automation is as simple as the title suggests—a process done automatically, not by a human being but by computer software that does not get tired, frustrated, and doesn’t need to sleep, drink or eat. Processes that become automated require less human involvement and certainly less human time to execute to its utmost efficiency.
Robotic Process Automation
One of the most apt examples of process automation and its benefit to a healthcare business is Olive’s Robotic Process Automation. Olive utilizes RPA to automate cyclical and time-consuming tasks that are rule-based and trigger-driven, freeing your staff from enduring countless hours of productivity that could have been better applied elsewhere in your business’ developments.
Now we’re sure when you hear the word “robotic”, you might immediately think about Rosie from the Jetsons, who performed menial house tasks as a robot made for a futuristic cartoon family from the Hannah Barbera cartoons, or, if you would like a more modern example, the Transformers who can transform into vehicles or other machinery assist human beings in various ways. Those aren’t the types of robots we’re talking about here.
Robots exist in other forms in technology, as detailed by Olive’s blog that also touches upon Robotic Process Automation. These technologies can consist of soft-bots, a computer program that acts on behalf of another user or program, or sensor networks, a group of spatially separated and dedicated sensors that monitor and record an environment’s physical conditions and organize the data collected at a vital location.
Oftentimes, RPA is considered the simplest form of Artificial Intelligence and is therefore used in business practices that require little skill. RPA specifically reaps benefits by giving skilled and specialized workers the opportunity to focus all of their attention on jobs that demand full human cognition and subjective decision making.
RPA vs Cognitive Automation
To put it simply, RPA takes a given set of inputs and produces a predictable, repeatable set of outputs. Not unlike a grunt or, aptly, a robot designed solely to follow instructions without freedom to think independent of its design, while other more advanced forms of intelligent automation, like cognitive automation autonomously improve in performance over time using machine learning. Machine learning is similar to humans gaining experience and figuring out more efficient ways to do things, but it is computers doing the iterating and learning instead of people. Both cognitive automation and RPA are beneficial tools for a myriad of work processes ranging from simple rule-based processes (RPA) to more complex judgement-based processes (cognitive automation).
Benefit 1: Minimize errors
In order for your organization to fire on all cylinders with maximum profitability and productivity, the main things you have to invest on are: saving time and decreasing or outright eliminating the risk of errors. Why? As they say, time is money, and errors are setbacks that can be avoided if you leverage the benefits of process automation. Software like Olive can assist healthcare organizations, hospitals, and their staff to remedy a human-made mistake or miscommunication.
To help conceptualize and quantify the benefits, let’s consider a common healthcare business process: eligibility checks. Often times, eligibility checks require a human to manually transfer data from one system to another system, and then make a decision (or have one provided to them) about eligibility. This mundane, but important process is prone to typos and human error given the same data being entered multiple times into different forms and User Interfaces (UIs). It is no surprise then that technical errors cause 61% of initial medical billing denials for eligibility. By offloading this business process to Olive, healthcare organizations can benefit from a high level of automation and repeatability in executing these tasks that minimizes susceptibility to human error and typos while still enabling businesses to use existing EHRs.
Benefit 2: Enhance problem-solving capacity
Automating processes in within your organization business doesn’t simply stop at the ‘cyclical and time-consuming tasks’. Enter, intelligent automation. Intelligent Automation is what is says on the tin: software that actually thinks for you, thus is the wonder of artificial intelligence and its role in intelligent automation. It isn’t simply mind-numbing repeatable tasks with minimum human monitoring, but actual problem-solving software that can actually think independent of human guidance and assist problem-solving on every level imaginable.
As best described in Olive’s article, 3 Trends to Consider Before AI Deployment, by 2026, intelligent automation might save the US healthcare economy a total of $150 billion annually according to a recent analysis by Accenture. It’s no wonder healthcare organizations are investing in intelligent automation, powered by AI software like Olive.
It doesn’t stop at healthcare, however, we’re seeing intelligent automation overtake the workplace and our daily lives all around us, from automated tellers at banks replacing human tellers, to booking hotel rooms online without needing to speak to a live person, to letting Google Maps navigate your next drive, just to name a few.
That being said, the most astounding example of intelligent automation, may indeed lie in healthcare. AI-assisted robots, as the article further explains, are aiding surgeons with medical decision support, image analysis and diagnostics, reducing and eliminating the potential of human error by joining human and machine in order to achieve the best results possible.
Benefit 3: Free clinical staff to work on clinical tasks
Another aspect of intelligent automation is cognitive automation software, which brings intelligence to information-intensive procedures. Cognitive automation is effectively the combination of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing. What sets cognitive automation apart is its performance of jobs that only human beings used to be able to do.
Often times, healthcare employees are bogged down with tedious administrative tasks that, while important to business, are inherently time-consuming and repetitive (e.g. insurance verification and data recording). These responsibilities can easily be outsourced to an RPA to execute in order to free up said staff so they can concentrate on tasks that humans excel at which require uniquely human skills like empathy and creativity (e.g. corresponding with patients, resolving more complex issues, etc.).
Part of cognitive automation is machine learning in order to have computing technology imitate human operations to complete tasks. While RPA is required to operate on a rule-base that limits its decision making, Cognitive automation expresses its artificial intelligence as a resource that learns as any human would in order to adapt and execute a job to its utmost efficiency, while becoming fatigued as a human being would, mind you.
Conclusion
In conclusion, in the field of healthcare alone, studies have found the increase in automation processing and data recording has decreased the in-hospital mortality rate by 15% and administrations that have adopted RPA have noticed a 200% return of investment in the first year of use according to this Olive white paper. Given the power of the technology and the myriad of high-volume tasks ripe for outsourcing to an intelligent automation solution in healthcare but it’s no wonder that intelligent process automation is a problem solver and driver of profitability-growth in the industry.
by Melissa Boyer | Dec 13, 2018 | Engineering, Resources, Uncategorized
This is the first in a series of Machine Learning posts meant to act as a gentle introduction to Machine Learning techniques and approaches for those new to the subject. The material is strongly sourced from Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn & TensorFlow by Aurélien Géron and from the Coursera Machine Learning class by Andrew Ng. Both are excellent resources and are highly recommended.
Machine Learning is often defined as “the field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed” (Arthur Samuel, 1959).
More practically, it is a program that employs a learning algorithm or neural net architecture that once trained on an initial data set, can make predictions on new data.
Common Learning Algorithms:¹
Linear and polynomial regression
Logistic regression
K-nearest neighbors
Support vector machines
Decision trees
Random forests
Ensemble methods
While the above learning algorithms can be extremely effective, more complex problems -, like image classification and natural language processing (NLP) – often require a deep neural net approach.
Common Neural Net (NN) Architectures:¹
Feed forward NN
Convolutional NN (CNN)
Recurrent NN (RNN)
Long short-term memory (LSTM)
Autoencoders
We will go into further detail on the above learning algorithms and neural nets in later blog posts.
Some Basic terminology:
Features – These are attributes of the data. For example, a common dataset used to introduce Machine Learning techniques is the Pima Indians Diabetes dataset, which is used to predict the onset of diabetes given additional health indicators. For this dataset, the features are pregnancies, glucose, blood pressure, skin thickness, insulin, BMI, etc.
Labels – These are the desired model predictions. In supervised training, this value is provided to the model during training so that it can learn to associate specific features with a label and increase prediction accuracy. In the Pima Indians Diabetes example, this would be a 1 (indicating diabetes onset is likely) or a 0 (indicating low likelihood of diabetes).
Supervised Learning – This is a learning task in which the training set used to build the model includes labels. Regression and classification are both supervised tasks.
Unsupervised Learning -This is a learning task in which training data is not labeled. Clustering, visualization, dimensionality reduction and association rule learning are all unsupervised tasks.
Some Supervised Learning Algorithms:¹
K-nearest neighbors
Linear regression
Logistic regression
Support vector machines (SVMs)
Decision trees and random forests
Neural networks
Unsupervised Learning Algorithms:¹
Clustering
• K-means
• Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA)
• Expectation maximization
Visualization and Dimensionality Reduction
• Principal component analysis (PCA)
• Kernel PCA
• Locally-linear embedding (LLE)
• t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE)
Association Rule Learning
• Apriori
• Eclat
Dimensionality Reduction: This is the act of simplifying data without losing important information. An example of this is feature extraction, where correlated features are merged into a single feature that conveys the importance of both. For example, if you are predicting housing prices, you may be able to combine square footage with number of bedrooms to create a single feature representing living space
Batch Learning: This is a system that is incapable of learning incrementally and must be trained using all available data at once1. To learn new data, it must be retrained from scratch.
Online Learning: This is a system that is trained incrementally by feeding it data instances sequentially. This system can learn new data as it arrives.
Underfitting: This is what happens when you creating a model that generalizes too broadly. It does not perform well on the training or test set.
Overfitting: This is what occurs when you creating a model that performs well on the training set, but has become too specialized and no longer performs well on new data.
Common Notations:
m: The total number of instances in the dataset
X: A matrix containing all of the feature values of every instance of the dataset
x(i): A vector containing all of the feature values of a single instance of the dataset, the ith instance.
y: A vector containing the labels of the dataset. This is the value the model should predict
References:
- Géron, Aurélien (2017). Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn & TensorFlow. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly.
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by Lauren D'Souza | Dec 12, 2018 | Uncategorized
Depending on whom you ask, artificial intelligence has the potential to transform our economy, take our jobs, overrun the human race, or maybe even a combination of the three. While AI holds a lot of promise, it has also turned into a buzzword that is frequently misunderstood and misapplied to both our lives and our businesses. This is especially true in healthcare, where the promise of better patient outcomes is often overshadowed by the threat of compromised jobs or regulatory red tape. To help set the record straight on the current state of AI in healthcare, we’ve put together a list of the top 10 myths we hear most frequently.
1. There is just one type of AI.
In fact, AI is a blanket term that comprises multiple types of technology, including optical character recognition, natural language processing, and machine intelligence. At its core, artificial intelligence refers to technology that mimics sophisticated human processes in a way that makes it indistinguishable from a human. In this way, our definition of AI comprises not just computer vision and machine intelligence, but also Robotic Process Automation, which automates repetitive, rule-based tasks.
2. Automation will take away more jobs than it creates.
In fact, industry experts speculate that the opposite will happen. The reason why is because AI adoption won’t happen overnight––and when it does happen, it will primarily replace repetitive, lower-skilled jobs that don’t require human traits such as creativity or empathy. This won’t invalidate the need for a human workforce; on the contrary, it will provide an opportunity for jobs to become less menial and more thoughtful.
3. AI is first and foremost a way to cut costs.
Some organizations may turn to AI as a way to cut costs, but that also can be a side-effect of so many other benefits that automation can bring. AI can help organizations improve their efficiency and KPIs, reduce risk, improve employee satisfaction and retention, and more…while also cutting the costs associated with them.
4. AI’s ROI is difficult to calculate.
Because AI is still a new business tool and ROI may not be as cut-and-dry as it is for other, more conventional business tools, many mistakenly think that AI’s ROI is difficult to ascertain and they choose to avoid the perceived risk. However, the key to assessing ROI is to be diligent in measuring your current-day spend––not only in terms of salary and benefits, but also in terms of risk, of extra days in A/R, and any other subsidiary metrics that might be positively influenced by AI. If you choose to work with an automation vendor, they will be able to help you think through the metrics to consider when evaluating AI’s ROI potential. Then, they will help you understand how AI will impact those metrics so that you can generate buy-in from your team––while also feeling confident yourself.
5. AI is a magic fix for your business.
Many organizations think that AI is the “secret sauce” that will help them improve efficiency, reduce costs, and make their employees happier. And while all of those things can and do happen when AI is executed properly, those effects don’t come quite as easily as some may believe. Many AI companies sell insights, not action, to their clients, which means that your organization still needs to do the work in order for AI to have a tangible impact on your business.*
6. AI requires large amounts of data.
It’s true that more data is always better when it comes to artificial intelligence––after all, the more historical data you have at your disposal, the more opportunities you have to “train” an algorithm to act a certain way based on similar data in the future. However, depending on the task that you intend to automate, certain AI frameworks are flexible enough to work with limited subsets of data.
7. Only large companies with in-house IT teams can benefit from AI.
Even as recently as a few years ago, organizations needed to employ a sophisticated internal IT team in order to build, customize, and implement an AI model for their organization. Not so today. At Olive, we’ve seen AI successfully implemented everywhere from the nation’s largest health systems down to 17-bed rural clinics. If your organization is on the smaller size but is still interested in implementing AI, you might consider contracting with a third party to build and manage your automations rather than bringing on extra in-house support.
8. You can’t build AI in-house.
With the advent of cloud technology, it’s easier than ever to create data-intensive automations and harness the power of AI for your organization. This, coupled with robotic process automation and AI platforms, provides organizations with more of a “do-it-yourself” option so that they can harness the benefits of AI without having to rely on external consultants. If you’re trying to determine whether building in-house or hiring an external consultant would be more beneficial for your organization, ask yourself whether AI is a part of your organization’s core competency (meaning, it directly aligns with the value proposition with which you face the market). If AI is a key component to your organization’s value statement, you might want to consider if you have the skills in-house to execute on your workflows. If that isn’t the case for your organization (which it likely is not for a provider), outsourcing your workflow to an automation vendor will help you harness the same impact without straining your internal resources.
9. AI inherently possesses the ability to learn from itself.
AI “learns” by analyzing test data and determining which inputs translated to a given output. It will make its best educated guess based on the data it has at its disposal, but just like humans, it needs additional support to help it differentiate “right” from “wrong.” Often, humans will re-train the algorithm to help it refine its predictions.
10. AI is still too risky to apply to healthcare.
There are too many applications of AI in healthcare––from diagnostics to imaging to revenue cycle management––for reservations to pervade the entire healthcare industry. It’s true that in a clinical setting, AI can pose a greater risk because the stakes of being “right” are much higher. However, administrative AI is a burgeoning subset of healthcare AI that focuses on improving operational efficiency by optimizing data transfers between healthcare tools and systems. In our experience, the impact potential is undeniable: one of our customers was able to reduce their Days in Accounts Receivable by 34% in the first 180 days of using AI to manage their organization’s insurance eligibility checks.
Even though AI in healthcare still is a new concept and will continue to be defined over time, early signs indicate that the sky is the limit in terms of its potential to benefit an organization’s operational efficiency. If your organization is looking for ways to harness the power of automation and AI, reach out to us today to learn more.
*That said, Olive isn’t one of those “Brain in a Jar” companies (as we like to call them). Our AI solutions automate your repetitive and high-volume tasks so that you can reap the rewards of AI without having to sacrifice your team’s time and bandwidth.
by Melissa Boyer | Nov 28, 2018 | Engineering, Uncategorized
I was fortunate that Olive sent me to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration (#GHC18)in Houston, TX, this year. It was an amazing and inspiring three-day event with 20,000 female technologists from across the globe. I was able to attend workshops and presentations on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), data and privacy, and career development presented by thought leaders from Google, Amazon, Deep Mind, and other industries.
Best of #GHC18? The best part of my GHC experience was:
Learning:
A. Building a serverless scheduler web app in Amazon Web Services (AWS) by creating buckets on S3, setting up static website hosting, creating a DynamoDB table to store schedule information, creating and testing three Lambda AWS functions used to add, get, and update calendar sessions, and creating and deploying an Application Program Interface (API) to trigger the new functions.
Hearing a panel discussion on the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and General Intelligence (GI) where we discussed the likelihood of reaching GI in our lifetimes, what our ethical responsibilities are as individuals and corporations as we develop new AI technologies, and how to address reward hacking in AI.
B. Learning more about privacy and security in the IoT space, the lack of knowledge on how massive amounts of collected personal information are being shared, lack of consumer control over personal data, and examples of data being used in unexpected ways.
Meeting New People: There are people from all around the world from the heaviest hitting mega-companies to small startups with bold, new ideas. It’s a great opportunity to find out what people across other industries are working on, the challenges they’ve faced, and the technologies and strategies they employ.
C. Inspiration: Attending #GHC18 and hearing the success stories of women further ahead in their careers, learning about their businesses, and hearing how they’re changing the world left me with a huge boost of inspiration to bring back and share with my colleagues.
I’m lucky to be a part of a company that values diversity and encourages growth.
See you at #GHC19!
20,000 women attend the opening keynote address at #GHC18
by Jennifer Comisford | Nov 19, 2018 | Healthcare
The rapid advancements in automation are revolutionizing business operations for organizations in practically every industry. As automation technology continues to evolve and uncover new opportunities to showcase its effectiveness, healthcare companies are one of the industries rapidly discovering the benefits of its methodologies. While hospitals are projected to invest over $50 billion dollars towards artificial intelligence and robotic process automation solutions by 2020, some in the industry are only beginning to look into the potential of these solutions and their game-changing advantages. After spending time with over 300 revenue cycle and IT executives at Becker’s 4th Annual Health & IT Revenue Cycle conference, our teams at Olive were able to garner some details behind executives’ findings and concerns. The top 5 takeaways we found include a sense of hesitation regarding the ability to prove ROI, but also reveal that the most agreed upon application of AI will prove its worth most in repetitive high volume tasks like eligibility checks, authorizations, and claims.
Robotic process automation and machine learning are often the two technologies discussed the most when broaching this topic, but what is the difference between the two? Further, which of these two work the best for a given use case? We’ll discuss the details of both methods and help you answer both of those questions in this piece.
What is robotic process automation?
It’s quite common for robotic process automation (RPA) to be thought of as actual robotic devices performing operations on an assembly line or robot constructs like The Iron Giant and Transformers. However, robots exist in other forms as part of other technologies like soft-bots, AI, sensor networks, and data analytics. Fundamentally, the simplest way to describe RPA is that it’s a process by which a repeatable rule-based task is executed through an automation solution.
Operating within predefined rules and procedures, RPA solutions are able to complete an action through a machine that would normally require human interaction. Whether the task is in a factory environment or office space, RPA can help with the construction of a component for a finished product or even help office productivity by brewing coffee through Wi-Fi enabled coffee makers. Because RPA solutions require a thoroughly practiced, documented, and familiar procedure to fulfill its automation benefits, some believe it will eliminate the need for humans in some areas, however, that isn’t really the case. RPA is designed to handle the tedious repetitive tasks humans currently must do, enabling enhanced human productivity by allowing humans to focus on the more complex and creative tasks they excel at.
Sometimes considered to be the most basic form of AI, robotic process automation is best utilized in business practices that require little skill and are performed under set parameters including how often a task needs to be executed and within specified timeframes. In healthcare applications, RPA reaps loads of benefits by allowing skilled and/or specialized staff to focus their attention towards tasks that require human cognition and subjective decision making. There are often instances within hospitals where employees with clinical skills, such as nurses and aides, are tasked with additional tasks of insurance verification and data recording. While these responsibilities are expected within their roles along with other staff members, these duties are ideal for an RPA solution to tackle. Having these non-clinical jobs being addressed through automation allows for staff to concentrate their attention on their principal tasks better suited for their skills of patient care and advocacy.
Studies have already shown that the increase of automation in processing medical records and documentation has led to a 15% decrease in the odds of in-hospital deaths and administrations that have adopted RPA have seen a 200% ROI within the first year of use (Olive AI white paper). As the U.S. nears a projected shortage of 250,000 nurses by 2025, identifying and implementing automation solutions within healthcare infrastructures has become a much more pressing need thus allowing clinical staff to dedicate their abilities towards tasks exhibiting their skillsets.
What is machine learning?
Similar to robotic process automation, the primary objective of machine learning (ML) is to also have computing technology mimic human operations. However, where RPA is required to operate within a rule and process-based environment that limits decision making under unfamiliar situations, ML truly expresses its artificial intelligence as a learning resource exhibiting what most feel is the biggest characteristic of AI; adaptation. Simply put, RPA acts more like a straightforward resource that executes actions based on its configuration, which places it in more of a grunt perspective with little freedom to “think” outside the box or exhibit any learning abilities. Machine learning, on the other hand, autonomously improves its performance over time, like humans, as the system is provided with observational data and real-world interaction. Some have even made the comparison between the two as brains over brawn with ML being the former.
In the healthcare industry, ML also adds exponential benefits to administrations acting as the router between systems and data by automating repetitive high traffic tasks. Serving as its own employee within an organization, an ML solution utilizes its own credentials to access system databases to record and report patient information or EHR (electronic health record). By following the local credential structure, this allows for seamless integration into existing systems with little change to accommodate its inclusion and no additional workflows. For example, our Olive AI can be used to perform patient insurance eligibility checks. After reviewing the patient record and history from their respective EHR, Olive can assist with checking against insurance eligibility portals. With a baseline of information gathered, the system can then proceed to offer approved solutions, compare previously approved authorizations, schedule future appointments and post-visit follow-ups, and payments. Having this level of automation 24/7 365 days of the year empowers hospital and clinic staff to center attention towards their most critical role of patient care.
An article published in Healthcare IT News reported a prediction from IDC (International Data Corporation) that global investment towards AI solutions will jump 60% this year totaling $12.5 billion and then up to $46 billion by 2020. As automation continues its seemingly endless upward trend and creates countless prospective breakthroughs in practically every industry, machine learning continues to be a key proponent towards technological advancement.
So which one is better?
To answer this question, decision-makers and executives must first determine their most critical business needs that can be best be improved through automation. Overall, robotic process automation and machine learning are both invaluable solutions that are sure to drastically enhance business performance for any organization. Some businesses may opt to incorporate an RPA option in order to automate their easier low skill functions as this will require little effort to integrate and in the smallest amount of time. Other organizations have decided to use RPA as a starting point in their AI implementation with machine learning as their end goal for automation. Nonetheless, having discussed the capabilities of both RPA and ML, it seems the only one who can determine which is better for a business is the business itself based on their requirements and ultimately the option that will provide the highest ROI over time.
At Olive, we strive to build revolutionary artificial intelligence and robotic process automation solutions for the healthcare industry that layer in ML for a more robust robotic process automation solution. Our focus is on improving business productivity through automation of the error-prone and mundane tasks of healthcare administration so that staff can focus on patient care. Our efficient cost-reducing options continue to deliver immediate positive results with Olive AI overseeing repetitious high traffic processes and workflows. These specialized tools empower our customers with the freedom to let their teams express the creativity and empathy that only a person is able to provide. Please contact us to schedule a demo of our Olive AI and let us begin developing a solution that can address your automation demands and be your first step towards an AI environment.
by Amber Schwartz | Oct 23, 2018 | Healthcare
Artificial intelligence is one of the hottest trends in the healthcare industry (and, let’s face it, just about every other industry right now). People have touted it as the cornerstone of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which might seem exciting to some of us––but to individuals working in repetitive, task-driven roles, this can take on more of an ominous tone. After all, the past Industrial Revolution completely reshaped the workforce and how humans approached their jobs and livelihoods. Can (and will) automation do the same thing, particularly in the healthcare industry?
In our last webinar with HFMA about optimizing the Revenue Cycle using Artificial Intelligence, several attendees asked us how artificial intelligence will impact their teams and if they should plan to downsize if they intend to introduce automation into their organizations. This is a common concern, and one that we hear time and time again at Olive. In order to help you better weather the storm and start a healthy dialogue about automation with your team, here are a few pointers to get you started.
1. Frame automation as a solution, not a threat. When discussing the potential for automation within your organization, you can take a similar approach with your fellow leadership and with your own team: rather than taking a doomsday approach, start a brainstorm about how automation can free up your team’s bandwidth, and where those individuals can be leveraged in a way that’s more meaningful to the organization as a whole (and to them!). After spending so long stuck in the status quo, this can be a challenge. Be sure to give all stakeholders plenty of context in advance of your conversation; that way, everyone can come prepared and open-minded to engage on the future of the organization.
2. Make your human team feel….well, human. It’s scary and vulnerable to think of technology invalidating your job, so approach the topic with empathy and optimism when talking with your team. Genuinely listen and respond to your team’s apprehensions in a way that makes them feel supported and appreciated. If you treat your team with respect and openness during these initial conversations, they will be less likely to see automation as a threat to their livelihoods, and more as a tool to help them do their jobs even better than before.
3. Keep them involved. No one likes having a major change dropped on them at the last minute, let alone without their input. Once you start talking with automation vendors about potential workflow solutions, keep your team closely involved––after all, they’re your in-house experts! They are closest to the problem and, if involved in the process from the beginning, they can help your workflow automations truly shine. Make sure that they have a direct line to your workflow automation vendors and that they feel a sense of ownership over the automation project.
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Artificial intelligence and automation can have an exponential impact on healthcare organizations’ operational efficiency and care delivery. But the first step to achieving that benefit is to gain buy-in from other stakeholders and especially from your own team. By speaking openly, early, and often about the impact it will have––on your entire organization––you can foster a sense of collective ownership and excitement for, not fear of, the future.
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4. Clarify your intentions and expectations for how artificial intelligence will impact your organization. Some leaders do turn to automation in order to downsize their teams–-and in some cases, it’s the ugly reality of what has to happen for their organization to stay in business. But other leaders look to automation as a way to scale and empower their existing workforce to achieve more than ever before. Having a clear stance on this––and understanding why, as a leader, you need to do this for your organization–will make subsequent conversations easier both for you and your team.
If you’re starting to explore automating part of your healthcare organization, our team is always happy to help you structure these early-level conversations with your team or with other stakeholders. Reach out to us today to learn more. Start here with us today.
by Rebecca Hellmann | Sep 26, 2018 | Healthcare
We’re back at Olive HQ after an invigorating week at Becker’s 4th Annual Health IT & Revenue Cycle Conference. We spent time with over 300 Rev Cycle and IT executives in Chicago. Through our conversations, one thing is clear – top hospital systems and executives are actively seeking to determine artificial intelligence and RPA’s (robotic process automation) place in their organizations.
Hospitals are forecasted to spend over $50 billion dollars on AI related technologies by 2020, according to Healthcare IT News. Yet, many are only beginning their evaluation of AI. So what are these leaders saying about AI and automation in healthcare? Here are five key insights we identified from our conversations with them:
1. 58% of revenue cycle and IT executives are simply trying to understand the hospital applications of AI and whether it makes sense for their organization
2. Healthcare organizations are looking for AI to capture missing revenue, increase accuracy of patient information captured and help with new tasks & processes
3. AI still doesn’t feel “easy” or “accessible” to healthcare executives. There are lingering questions on reliability, ROI, and organizational fit
4. Leaders in Healthcare believe the best applications of AI across the Revenue Cycle are eligibility checks, prior authorizations and claims processing
5. AI and Automation is poised to provide the quickest ROI when matched with repetitive, high volume tasks across the Revenue Cycle
Wondering how you can apply AI and RPA successfully in your organization? As a healthcare-exclusive AI and RPA company, Olive can help you identify the right approach to applying AI in your hospital. Start here with us today.
by Austin Every | Sep 24, 2018 | Uncategorized
It’s Your Job To Figure That Out
When you’re building a product for someone, the first thing you need to know is that your customer probably doesn’t care.
They will care. Once you’ve finished the product, put it in their hands, and made their life better, then they will care.
For about as long as it takes them to remember that lunch is in an hour. Then they’re back to not caring.
Such is the life of a product creator. It’s your job to create something new for customers, but it’s not their job to care. This can seem disrespectful. You slaved away, building this product for them. You’ve sacrificed weeks, months, years of your life to make this — and they can’t be bothered to give you a little feedback?
You might feel entitled to at least some attention. You are, after all, building a product for them. Surely they can take some time out of their day to tell you what you should make.
But they won’t, for a couple of reasons:
- They don’t care enough to. They have a million other things going on in their life. Things more important than telling a programmer how to do their job.
- They’re too busy to. Chances are, they’re busy building something else for someone else. They don’t have time to sit down and go over the product with you.
- They don’t know how. They don’t have the skills to create the products they use, and they don’t have the bandwidth to sit around and come up with ways the product could be different. Studies have shown that the only feedback they can give you is feedback about what they’ve already used, not what’s possible. (Considering what’s possible is your job).
They don’t because it isn’t worth their time. People value their own time. “The majority (66%) of adults feel that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good online customer experience.”
That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth your time, because it is. The reason customers won’t give you attention isn’t that your work doesn’t matter; it’s because they have delegated the work to you and trust you to get it done. The highest authority in any business isn’t the CEO or the board, but the customers. It’s their money that pays the bills.
It’s your job to solve their problem, and to solve it with as little support as possible.
To some people, that sounds harsh. ‘You expect me to solve your problem, without your help?’ It can even seem like a tautology; how do you solve a problem you know nothing about?
In reality, it’s honorable work to have. And deep down inside, you know this. You’re in this position because you decided to make building products for other people your job. You made it your job (hopefully) not because you thought you’d get rich, or because it was easy, but because you find meaning in the work. Appealing to customers to tell you what to do not only produces a worse product; it takes the challenge and the honor out of doing it.
That said, you want to stay receptive to any feedback they have without forcing them to give it. People may not be able to imagine what will make them happy, but they can tell you how they feel about what’s in front of them right now.
Not getting in the customer’s way is almost as important as making the product in the first place. One study showed that 74% of customers are likely to switch brands if they find the buying experience difficult, no matter how awesome the product. This is a painful loss because it costs anywhere from 5 to 25 times as much to acquire a new customer as it does to keep a current one.
If your customers could help you that much, you’d be out of a job.
As it so happens, they can’t. By virtue of their position, they lack the objectivity they need to understand their problems. By virtue of their jobs, they lack the skills necessary to engineer a solution to their problems. And by virtue of their daily responsibilities, they lack the vision to consider other possibilities.
“I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, “A faster horse!”’ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”
Steve Jobs
Your customers may not be able to actively help you, but they are still a valuable source of information. Their behavior is feedback in and of itself.
- If they receive what you build with no comment, it communicates something. It could mean that your solution is so compelling that they don’t need to worry about it anymore. Or it could mean they’re not using your solution because their previous one is easier for them.
- If they react positively, that doesn’t mean it’s time to pump the breaks. It means whatever you’re doing, you’re doing right. You should be doing more of it.
- If they receive your product with reluctance (or outright complaints), it means you’ve taken a wrong turn. Don’t wait until they complain about the product or cancel their service. Make sure to identify what’s causing the friction and solve it before it becomes a more significant problem.
“The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.”
Jeff Bezos
It’s an honor to create products for people. Nothing matches the satisfaction you get when you see something you made changing the lives of countless other people. People are leaving it up to you to create something for them. And when they start using it, you know it isn’t because someone forced it on them, but because it makes their life better.
At Olive, we make Artificial Intelligence for doctor’s offices and hospitals that handle administrative tasks, so healthcare employees can do what they do best — take care of their patients. Check out our website to learn more.
