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Artificial Intelligence for EHR

Use Cases, Costs, Challenges

Having worked with AI technology since 1989, ScienceSoft develops robust EHR and EMR software that employs artificial intelligence for data-driven care.

Artificial Intelligence for EHR - ScienceSoft
Artificial Intelligence for EHR - ScienceSoft

The Essence of AI Technology in EHR

When embedded in EHR, AI analyzes health records to improve diagnostic accuracy and predict complications. Quality-of-life AI features (NLP, image recognition, smart input suggestions) enhance operational efficiency and streamline patient records management for physicians and nurses.

Market Overview and Benefits

The healthcare AI market was estimated at $22.45 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $208.2 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 36.4%. The need to improve complex and inefficient EHR workflows and get valuable insights from historical patient data drives the demand for AI-powered EHRs.

How does AI improve EHR?

Speeds up patient record management thanks to convenience features (e.g., speech recognition, AI suggestions for data entry).

Lifts the load of administrative tasks off physicians and nurses by automating routine processes (e.g., appointment scheduling, clinical documentation), leaving more time for direct patient care.

Improves patient care quality and consistency thanks to more cohesive records, AI-enhanced treatment planning, and more.

Provides diagnostic assistance with an accuracy of up to 98.7%.

Use Cases of AI for EHR

Smart diagnostic suggestions help promptly identify diseases, determine factors that influence health conditions, and predict side effects.

  • Medical image analysis. AI interprets medical images to find abnormal areas that may remain unseen by a radiologist or a physician, for example, potential brain tumors.
  • Assessment of lab tests. EHR AI algorithms identify abnormal lab test parameters that may indicate a potential diagnosis.
  • Health records analysis. AI tools embedded in EHR help clinicians process large amounts of health records, spot correlations that could remain unnoticed and help make a definitive diagnosis.

Patient records management

AI optimizes data entry and helps physicians get relevant patient data fast while avoiding medical errors.

  • Virtual assistants. AI voice assistant for EHR helps clinicians get patient data in audio format or initiate care procedures on the go.
  • Documentation automation. AI-powered EHRs enable convenient patient records management with dictation, converting physical medical records into digital format, suggesting relevant input data, and more.
  • AI-enabled medical billing. AI algorithms can detect insurance fraud, find errors in submitted claims, or automate the medical coding process.

Treatment personalization

AI algorithms help identify patterns in the symptoms and test results, predict patient outcomes, and plan personalized treatment.

  • Treatment planning. Based on the EHR data, AI algorithms can suggest personalized treatment plans. For example, a case study proves that AI treatment plans for radiation therapy can be either more or as efficient as human-generated ones in 88% of cases.
  • Medication planning. Based on the patient’s lab tests, medical history, age, sex, and other aspects, in-built AI algorithms can define the potential medication options and calculate the optimal medication dosage.

Features for Advanced AI-Powered EHR Software

No two custom EHRs are the same. However, our healthcare IT experts gathered a comprehensive list of the most commonly requested EHR features that can be adjusted to your unique needs.

Natural language processing (NLP)

Medical staff can create patient records by simply dictating the relevant information. AI-powered NLP will interpret the voice and compose clinical notes to help save physicians’ time.

Clinical data extraction

Using AI-based optical character recognition, EHR extracts the data from unstructured text (e.g., clinical notes, printed health records). Then, the system can process the data, add it to the relevant databases, and link it to ICD-10, SNOMED CT codes.

Text-to-speech functionality

A built-in AI assistant can voice the relevant patient records to save a physician’s time on patient health data search. Using text-to-speech for prescriptions and clinical notes may also help medical staff double-check the entered data and eliminate errors.

Built-in AI suggestions

When managing patient records in EHR, physicians can get autocomplete suggestions for clinical terms and codes, autofill certain patient information, etc. To increase physicians’ efficiency, AI suggestions from a patient’s medical history (e.g., recent lab tests, allergies) are displayed on a side panel.

Diagnostic functionality

Leveraging AI algorithms and comprehensive patient data, EHR software color-codes lab test results, interprets medical images, defines potential diagnoses, and can warn physicians about high-risk conditions (e.g., heart failure, diabetic coma).

Physician decision support

During care planning, AI functionality can help personalize patient treatment (e.g., offer medication alternatives considering allergies), calculate medication dosage, or suggest additional tests if a patient has other health risks.

Telemedicine appointment planning

In telemedicine-integrated EHRs, AI can assist in scheduling follow-up appointments based on the doctor’s notes and send notifications of the upcoming visits to the patient app.

Billing

Dealing with structured and unstructured care data, AI helps define relevant billing information and create comprehensive billing reports, as well as conduct patient eligibility check and insurance verification.

How Much Does a Custom AI EHR Cost?

Key cost factors

  • The intended scope and complexity of AI functionality.
  • The required accuracy of ML algorithms.
  • The data quality thresholds, number of data sources, and the volume of data to be stored and processed.
  • The number and complexity of integrations with other solutions (e.g., patient portals).
  • Security, UI, and UX requirements.
  • Compliance-associated costs (e.g., for FDA registration of SaMD functionality).
  • Cloud services (e.g., ML tools), infrastructure, maintenance, and support costs.
Pricing Information

On average, the software development costs start from $400,000 – $450,000 for a custom EHR system with AI features like dictation, virtual physician assistance, or smart suggestions.

Learn the cost of your AI EHR development project!

Calculate the cost

Get to Know the Cost of Your EHR Development Project

Please answer a few quick questions about your EHR requirements to help our healthcare IT consultants calculate your solution cost faster.

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*What are the core EHR features you need? Check all that apply:

*What medical specialties is your EHR intended for?

*What type of company do you represent?

*What is the expected number of users?

*How many organizations do you plan to target with your software, approximately?

*How many end users (individuals from all organizations) will use your software, approximately?

*Are there any compliance requirements for your planned EHR? Check all that apply:

*What kind of software do you need? Check all that apply:

Do you have any preferences for the deployment model?

*Which software version do you need?

Do you need to migrate data from legacy software?

Would you require any integrations?

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With other healthcare software (HIE, imaging software, etc.), patient portals, third-party services (user authentication, payment systems), etc.

Do you have tech stack preferences?

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Particular programming languages, development frameworks, cloud services, etc.

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Our team is on it!

ScienceSoft's experts will study your case and get back to you with the details within 24 hours.

Our team is on it!

Tech Stack to Employ AI for EHR

With 18 years of experience in healthcare IT, ScienceSoft recommends using the following technologies for AI-enabled EHR software development:

How to Tackle Challenges of AI Implementation for EHR

With AI-based EHRs, healthcare organizations can significantly improve the performance of the medical staff and reduce care costs while improving the value of care. Relying on 34 years of experience in AI implementation, we know the benefits always come with technology challenges. Here, we list the most common of them and offer the solutions that proved to be efficient in practice.

Challenge #1: Biased data sets

The data sets used to train ML-based treatment or diagnostics modules may be biased (e.g., in favor of certain demographics or conditions) and deliver inaccurate results.

Solution

Domain-proficient data scientists must ensure the quality of the data sets used to train an ML model for EHR. If you’re using ready-made data sets for medical AI training, data scientists should run multiple tests to check whether an ML model returns reliable results. If high-quality data sets are unavailable, data scientists create them using anonymized patient data.

To increase the accuracy of diagnostic or prescriptive AI tools, ScienceSoft’s data engineers offer two practical solutions. The first one is to aim for the diversity of the data set: ideally, it should closely match the composition of the society in which you intend to use the ML engine. Alternatively, you can define a narrow demographic group from the start (e.g., geriatric patients in Florida) and compose a smaller data set that’s fully representative of the target group.

Challenge #2: Security risks

Technology-intensive, highly interconnected EHR systems pose high data security risks.

Solution

From the very start of its development, an AI EHR requires an elaborate cybersecurity strategy. To mitigate the risks, ScienceSoft builds EHR software with secure architectures, considers regulatory requirements from day one, follows secure development practices, and conducts regular security testing.

Challenge #3: Adding AI into existing EHR

Introducing AI functionality into existing EHRs may affect their performance or lead to business disruptions.

Solution

Some healthcare organizations are satisfied with their current EHR but want to leverage AI functionality to improve care efficiency. If you’re using a market-available EHR product, a good strategy is to create a separate AI software module (e.g., for NLP-powered data input) and integrate it with the off-the-shelf EHR in use. In the case of custom-built EHRs, ScienceSoft starts with assessing the EHR architecture. If it’s flexible enough, we develop additional AI functionality for the solution. If our engineers see that the additions will deteriorate EHR performance, we recommend EHR re-architecting before adding AI functionality.

Robust Architecture for an AI-Enabled EHR System

The essential elements of an EHR system are medical staff interface, admin interface, patient record storage, and a terminology service. An AI engine is used to power the software with clinical insights, suggestions from patient health history, and more.

Based on hands-on experience in designing AI-powered EHR software, ScienceSoft's architects recommend starting with the following architecture and adjusting it to the project specifics.

Architecture for AI_Enabled EHR System - ScienceSoft

Senior Business Analyst and Healthcare IT Consultant at ScienceSoft

I always recommend integrating an EHR with your revenue cycle management system, practice management software, HIE software, a CRM, medical imaging software, a laboratory information system, a patient portal, or a telehealth app.

It is especially important when you build an AI engine since it requires access to the most recent and relevant data from the connected systems to make correct decisions regarding patient care, diagnostics, follow-up examinations, and more.

5 Questions about AI EHR Development, Answered by ScienceSoft

EHR development is a challenging endeavor, and we know these questions may keep you up at night:

Do I need deep AI knowledge to build an AI-powered EHR?

No, ScienceSoft’s healthcare IT consultants will help you shape a winning EHR concept and a fitting AI feature set based on their 9-20 years of experience in the industry. During the development, we’ll create sufficient documentation for AI EHR for easier certification, maintenance, support, and updates. If needed, ScienceSoft is ready to create training materials and conduct knowledge transfer to your IT team.

I’ll need two separate teams, one for EHR development and one for AI, won’t I?

Definitely no. ScienceSoft takes over the whole EHR delivery process – from design and development to AI model training, software certification, and launch. We have 34 years of experience in AI and over 18 years in healthcare software development, so your project is safe with us.

How long does it take to develop an EHR with AI features?

It usually takes around 2–6 months to deliver the first version of EHR software. Then, we will gradually evolve the system using our mature Agile approach, established CI/CD and DevOps practices, and a feasible share of testing automation to ensure frequent and stable updates. When your AI EHR is market-ready, we will start the certification process (it may differ based on your target market) and launch the software.

Can AI-powered EHR communicate with other IT systems without any issues?

Sure, it’s possible! Leveraging 18 years in healthcare IT and expertise in HL7, FHIR, ICD-10, CPT, and XDS/XDS-I standards, our team designs EHR integrations at the very beginning of the project and can build custom APIs to facilitate smooth and secure PHI exchange.

Won’t AI complicate regulatory compliance?

Yes, AI components, especially if they’re used for diagnostic assistance, complicate things and may be harder to get relevant approvals for. But even the most complex software is still code when it comes down to it. We know how to build transparent and compliant EHR from the ground up and prepare for certification ahead of time. Being ISO 9001, ISO 27001, and ISO 13485 certified, ScienceSoft follows industry best practices in software quality and security, including for SaMD development. Our in-house consultants proficient in HIPAA, GDPR, ONC, FDA, MDR, MACRA, MIPS, CEHRT, SAFER, and SAMHSA, are involved in the process every step of the way, participating in software design, QA, and pre-market submission.

Take a First Step Toward Your AI-Powered EHR with Experts

With over 100+ successful IT projects for the healthcare industry, ScienceSoft implements cutting-edge EHR software with AI capabilities for records management, diagnostics, and treatment.

AI-powered EHR consulting

Want to create a truly convenient EHR with advanced features? ScienceSoft’s AI and healthcare IT experts will guide you through the project planning and software design stages to help avoid any risks and speed up the development.

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AI-powered EHR development or evolution

ScienceSoft’s team is ready to take charge of the entire development project and deliver a turnkey AI-powered EHR with all the needed integrations. With our decades-long experience and KPI-based approach, you will get a robust EHR solution fast.

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About ScienceSoft

A global IT consulting and software development company, ScienceSoft was founded in 1989 and worked with AI ever since. Now, with a team of seasoned healthcare IT consultants and developers, ScienceSoft designs and develops EHR solutions with best-in-class advanced features.