Salesforce AI in Healthcare: Tools and Applications Across Industries + Einstein Copilot Health Actions Review

How will the companies using AI in healthcare deal with it? Here are a few findings and artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare statistics from Salesforce Pulse of the Patient Snapshot survey:

People are unclear about the role of AI in healthcare but know it will have an effect. However, AI in healthcare must be used securely and ethically, enhancing rather than replacing human efforts.

Let's explore how AI harmonizes with modern health sciences and care, how Salesforce AI in healthcare specifically impacts care teams with their health and life sciences (HLS) offerings, and what’s in it for your organization.

Contents:

First, let’s outline why AI is a buzzword for many healthcare organizations. According to AI in the Health Care Industry: Driving Efficiency and Better Patient Experiences whitepaper by Harvard Business Review, key benefits of AI in healthcare include:

Here is how AI is already being applied in healthcare, according to an Applications of AI in Health & Life Sciences Study by Forrester and Salesforce:

First, let’s sort out the main AI tools by Salesforce that permeate all Salesforce product lines:

Einstein AI is Salesforce's core artificial intelligence platform that powers various automated features across all Salesforce clouds. It provides predictive analytics, insights, and recommendations to help users make data-driven decisions. Einstein AI works more in the background, automatically running models and providing insights.

Einstein Copilot is a Salesforce AI assistant. It is designed to interact with users in real time with natural language, as if they're talking to a human, and help them navigate Salesforce more efficiently. Each user request or instruction is understood in the context of an ongoing conversation, so a user can ask follow-up questions or make related requests.

The copilot respects standard Salesforce access controls such as licenses and permissions, so it always acts securely. It’s integrated with the Einstein Trust Layer, a secure AI architecture natively built into the Salesforce.

Below are all Salesforce products for the HLS sector with natively integrated Salesforce conversational AI or AI-powered analytics.

Healthcare organizations struggle with managing intricate patient data, coordinating care among teams, and delivering tailored patient experiences.

Salesforce Health Cloud, the overarching platform built specifically for healthcare providers, tackles these issues by offering a comprehensive patient view, clinical data, and interactions, optimizing workflows, and providing powerful analytics and reporting tools. This platform enhances patient satisfaction costs and helps achieve better outcomes.

Health Cloud is valuable for a wide range of healthcare-related organizations, including:

Designed to enhance patient care and collaboration between healthcare professionals, Health care offers the following features:

There are a few Salesforce AI in Healthcare features compatible with Health Cloud:

The Unified Health Scoring feature is a tool with a user-friendly interface that provides a comprehensive and dynamic view of a patient’s health status, helping to recognize high-risk patients promptly. Using data from various sources, such as electronic health records (EHRs), wearable devices, and patient surveys, UHS generates a unified health score for each patient.

Unified Health Scoring displays scores, but it doesn't calculate them directly. By exporting patient health records to Data Cloud, you can use its Calculated Insights feature to process and generate scores.

Data Cloud for Health incorporates machine learning and AI to analyze patient data, identify trends and potential risks, and produce a comprehensive health score based on that analysis. The scores are then imported back into the Health Score object in Health Cloud.

Einstein Analytics for Health Cloud leverages AI to provide predictive and prescriptive analytics integrated with patient and operational data within Health Cloud. It helps healthcare providers make data-informed decisions by predicting patient outcomes, identifying risks, and suggesting the next best actions.

Einstein Analytics offers customized healthcare dashboards in Health Cloud, such as patient risk stratification, care coordination, and population health management.

Intelligent Appointment Management enables healthcare providers to manage appointments and improve scheduling efficiency through AI automation based on patient preferences, provider availability, and care urgency. It also reduces missed appointments and patient no-shows with notifications and enables self-rescheduling using Einstein Predictions.

One of the more recent additions to Salesforce for the healthcare family, Assessment Generation with Einstein Generative AI, offers automated document analysis and detailed information extraction to generate assessment questions from PDF or DOCX files. This feature enables LHS organizations to digitize standardized assessments and automatically upload them into Health Cloud.

For example, an administrator can upload an OASIS-E survey, turn the questions into digital fields, and have patients fill them out electronically. This approach simplifies data entry, reduces errors, and cuts setup time from days to minutes.

Tableau Pulse for Health, built on Tableau’s advanced data visualization, uses generative AI to present insights in plain language, making it easier for healthcare professionals to interpret metrics.

For instance, clinicians and care managers can easily access and visualize key patient statistics, such as readmission rates, length of stay, and care plan adherence. Tableau Pulse ensures data security and reliability via the Einstein Trust Layer.

When integrated with Data Cloud for Health, Tableau Pulse enables healthcare professionals to explore their data and act on real-time insights. It delivers personalized, intelligent insights directly in everyday workflows like email and Slack.

Salesforce has unveiled Einstein Copilot for Health, a new AI-powered tool designed to enhance the Salesforce Health Cloud experience.

Einstein Copilot is a conversational AI assistant that interacts in real time with healthcare professionals to streamline their use of Salesforce. It can generate interaction summaries for the care coordinator. The summaries can be sent to the patient and any new primary care provider and easily added to records in the system. The call summary includes all the interaction details and clearly articulates the next steps for the patient.

Einstein Copilot Health Actions addresses the need for more intuitive, hands-on support in healthcare settings. It is available in Lightning Experience for Enterprise and Unlimited editions with Health Cloud and Einstein GPT add-ons.

Some of the features include:

Data Cloud for Health and Tableau Pulse are currently generally available. Assessment Generation launched in the summer of 2024. By the same time, Einstein Copilot is anticipated to meet HIPAA compliance standards, with Copilot: Health Actions expected to be released in winter 2024.

However, integrating Einstein Copilot with existing systems and workflows may present challenges, requiring adjustments and training. Ensuring the security and privacy of sensitive patient data remains critical.

Salesforce perspective:

HLS leaders recognize using AI in healthcare as crucial for business growth and differentiation. While there's enthusiasm for leveraging AI across various organizational levels, many HLS organizations face challenges, particularly data readiness. Forming selective, long-term partnerships with versatile vendors is essential to meet their goals. Choosing the right partner for implementing and configuring Salesforce AI in Healthcare can simplify the implementation process.