Ai To Assist Nurses: New Research Project Reveals The Potential Of Technology In Healthcare
In many countries, the social welfare sector is struggling with enormous cost-cutting pressures, labour shortage and the growing demand for its services. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland , together with its partners, is taking part in an international research project on how artificial intelligence AI could support the work of nurses. In addition to VTT, Finnish participants include Turku University of Applied Sciences , the University of Eastern Finland , the Northern Savo and Southwest Finland wellbeing services counties, Mediconsult, Oiva Health and Solita.
Various digital tasks, such as patient registration, reviewing patient information, familiarising with instructions and giving them, take a significant part of nurses daily working hours. Reducing the time consumed on these tasks with the help of better technological solutions could free up working time for patient encounters and lighten the nurses workload.
For instance, the German consultancy TLGG has estimated that if utilised 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.
Together with Finnish higher education institutions, wellbeing services counties and companies, VTT is developing solutions to reduce the nurses workload by utilising AI. The work is carried out in cooperation with several European countries as part of ITEAs PROFIT project.
Ville Salaspuro , Medical Director of Finnish Mediconsult Oy, believes that using AI-based tools will be an important part of the future work of social welfare and healthcare professionals.