DNP, MSN, BMA, RN
Telehealth and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been hot topics in healthcare recently. Applying these technological advancements to healthcare brings progressions never seen before in the industry.
Nurse teaching, both in nursing schools and with patients, is not exempt from these changes. In fact, the current and future generation of nurses must be educated, prepared, and trained in both telehealth and AI technology. Nurses must remain abreast of the latest advancements to properly use them and apply them to patient care.
The National Institutes of Health defines telehealth as the use of communications technology to provide healthcare at a distance. Despite the recent push to use telehealth, the technology has been in use since 1960. Made popular due to growing demand surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, one study noted that approximately 76% of hospitals in the United States use some form of telehealth.
The extent of telehealth application varies between organizations. However, some have embraced the technology, providing up to a completely virtual clinical program. Some programs that can apply telehealth technology include antimicrobial stewardship, critical care, hospitalist, infectious disease, medical oncology, behavioral health, newborn critical care, neuro consults, neurostroke, pediatrics and wound care.
AI is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines. These services are programmed in such a way that they can mirror human behavior. While AI covers many types of applications, healthcare is known to use a select few, including speech or facial recognition and human-level AI.
Human-level AI, or artificial general intelligence (AGI), uses broadly intelligent and context-aware machines. AGI allows for the use of social chatbots and human-robot interactions, according to Stanford University. This can be particularly helpful in healthcare when the systems are aimed at mimicking the judgment of nurses, providers, and other healthcare professionals. AI has been around since the early 1980s but has come a long way since.
When COVID-19 hit the United States in March 2020, many organizations had to find alternative ways to continue business. Nursing schools were forced to implement new ways to provide instruction, simulation, and clinical exposure. Telehealth technology became the new normal for lectures and nursing instruction. Virtual simulation was also used, thanks to the application of AI.
Students were provided with real-life scenarios and clinical challenges nurses would face in the healthcare setting, where AI would improve or degrade a patient’s conditions depending on the nursing interventions applied. Finally, clinical hours were on hold or waived depending on the timeline of graduation.
The application of telehealth and AI in healthcare has certain benefits. Telehealth can reduce time, cost, and the difficulty of accessing healthcare. The application of AI includes benefits of patient charting, medication, and wound care, among others. Patient-charting assistance through AI can replicate this task to reduce or completely remove the time spent charting. Medication administration with AI help can reduce medication errors. Wound care AI helps properly identify the tissue present, thus increasing the application of correct treatment and reducing recovery time.
But drawbacks of telehealth and AI also exist. Telehealth does remove the opportunity for healing touch, such as holding a patient’s hand when providing a terminal diagnosis. Telehealth also can be intimidating to patients who are not tech savvy. AI drawbacks may include security risks, such as malicious actors using technology to complete identity theft. AI may also open challenges of job loss, as AI can take over certain tasks and skills that were previously filled by professionals.
The future of healthcare will be significantly affected by telehealth and AI. While both are already implemented in nursing schools and healthcare at large, this is just the beginning of the technological advances that are occurring.
Some advances include natural language processing, remote-monitoring, robotics and automation, data analysis and information, and clinical decision support systems (CDSS). By including both telehealth and AI in nursing education, nursing students are preparing for the advancements already in place and what is predicted for the future.
Telehealth and AI are the future of healthcare. They have already been implemented in healthcare and will continue to grow in use in nursing education — both in nursing school and patient education. Not only does the technology enhance nursing students’ experience in their educational journeys, but it must be implemented in nursing education to train and prepare the next generation of nurses. It is quite probable that the future of nursing schools will include entire courses on telehealth and AI technology, as well as simulations and clinical hours done virtually to embrace the advances in telehealth and AI nursing.
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