Finland's VTT Technical Research Centre is creating AI-based solutions to reduce nurses' workloads in collaboration with Finnish universities, wellness service counties, and businesses.
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The social welfare sector faces significant pressure to reduce costs, a labor shortage, and an increasing demand for its services in many nations. An international study on the potential benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) for nurses' work is being conducted by the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and its partners. Along with VTT, other Finnish participants include Mediconsult, Oiva Health, Solita, the Northern Savo and Southwest Finland wellbeing services counties, Turku University of Applied Sciences, and the University of Eastern Finland.
A large portion of nurses' daily workday is devoted to various digital tasks, including patient registration, patient information review, familiarization with instructions, and delivery. If improved technology made these tasks faster, nurses could reduce their workloads and spend more time with patients.
“For instance, the German consultancy TLGG has estimated that if utilized properly, artificial intelligence could save more than 30% of nurses’ working hours, which they could spend on more valuable tasks – meeting customers and providing care,” says Senior Scientist Jouni Kaartinen from VTT.
ITEA's PROFIT project involves collaboration with multiple European nations. Business Finland's Health 360 Finland initiative is funding the project.
AI-based tools will play a significant role in the future work of social welfare and healthcare professionals, according to Ville Salaspuro, Medical Director of Finnish Mediconsult Oy.
These tools will make professionals’ work more efficient. They will have more time to focus on customers instead of consuming time on information systems. The project provides concrete opportunities to validate the use of AI-based tools in a genuine operational environment.
Ville Salaspuro, Medical Director, Finnish Mediconsult Oy
Healthcare Professionals Involved in the Development
Associate Professor Laura-Maria Peltonen from the University of Eastern Finland adds, “A traditional problem in the healthcare sector has been that nursing professionals have not been involved in the technology development. As a result, the functionality or usability of the systems doesn’t always support nursing work. Additionally, research evidence on the impact of different solutions on the operation of organizations is yet scarce.”
Kaartinen claims that artificial intelligence could, for example, use a voice or graphical interface to automatically and illustratively give professionals pertinent patient information. AI has the potential to be a great helper when patients are looking for assistance, while they are in the hospital, and after they leave. This could improve treatment monitoring, decrease recurrent visits, and make it easier to access the appropriate service.
Nurse-centricity is at the core of the project. The developed technology will be brought to our nursing students for testing. This way, we will learn how development should be done to promote end-user acceptability of new technology and prevent it from being perceived as a threat or as clumsy in terms of usability.
Paula Savolainen, Senior Lecturer, Turku University of Applied Sciences
Data Availability is a Challenge
According to Kaartinen, the development of AI solutions in healthcare has been severely impeded by the challenge of acquiring the required data. Training a useful conversational AI with extensive material, such as authentic anonymized speech data, patient data, and other healthcare documentation, is crucial because healthcare involves many professional terms.
“As a lot of health data is already digitized, obtaining it securely for research and product development creates significant advantages. However, this has been complicated from a legal perspective. Anonymized and consent-based data would ultimately benefit all parties,” said Kaartinen.
“Software companies must protect their customers’ personal information and data by legislation. The PROFIT project is developing technical solutions and operating methods that would enable data use in accordance with the law,” said Manu Setälä, Research Head of Solita.
During the project's first phase, practice tasks completed by nursing students and other simulated data will be used to train AI solutions.
Several ethical issues remain to be addressed. Even with AI, professionals still make decisions and bear responsibility. For example, Kaartinen said AI could not directly enter data into patient or customer records without a professional's separate consent. Alternatively, AI might offer an entry recommendation that the expert can accept or modify. The project investigates the morality and acceptability of AI-assisted solutions from the viewpoints of nurses and clients.