To date, the use of AI has mainly focused on supporting the provision of medical services, such as image recognition in radiology, support in finding a diagnosis or the personalization of therapies. An often neglected but no less important area for the integration of AI is healthcare administration.
AI automation of healthcare administration to reduce the cost of service delivery
The European healthcare system is under considerable cost pressure. Annual healthcare expenditure in Europe amounts to around 1.4 trillion euros, of which the pharmaceutical sector accounts for around 200 billion euros. Deducting these costs results in a base of 1.2 trillion euros*. An estimated EUR 194 billion of this is attributable to bureaucratic and administrative costs, which could be reduced by up to EUR 80 billion (41%) through the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
| Cost item | Current costs (billion euros) | Possible savings through AI (%) | Savings (billion euros per year) | Savings in % of total bureaucratic costs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Administrative costs | 112 | 50% | 56 | 28,9% |
| Management of health data | 21 | 30% | 6,3 | 3,3% |
| Optimization of personnel administration and planning | 20 | 25% | 5 | 2,6% |
| Automation of routine tasks in patient care | 20 | 40% | 7,84 | 4% |
| IT administration and system maintenance | 21 | 20% | 4,2 | 2,2% |
| Total bureaucratic costs | 194 | 33% (in average) | 79,34 | 41% |
Introduction of a platform for AI integration in healthcare companies
To realize the above savings, basebox is developing a secure, privacy-compliant and scalable AI integration platform. This platform supports healthcare companies in easily and securely integrating AI technologies into their existing processes
The implementation of this platform helps to reduce the financial burden on the healthcare system. Employee satisfaction increases due to the reduction of tedious, sometimes grueling administrative work.
The savings can be directly reinvested in improving patient care, modernizing infrastructure, optimizing working conditions and strengthening prevention work.
Challenges
The introduction of an AI integration platform in the healthcare sector brings with it several challenges that have not yet been solved:
- Adaptation to workflows: Ensuring that the new platform can be seamlessly integrated into existing workflows.
- Security/privacy: Ensuring the protection of sensitive patient data in accordance with data protection laws.
- Data integration: Coping with the heterogeneous and often fragmented IT landscapes in the healthcare sector.
The platform and its components
To address the challenges, the platform consists of three main components:
- Apps: No/low-code tools that enable developers, employees and service providers to easily create applications that meet the specific requirements of healthcare companies.
- Management System: A centralized system for managing and monitoring model usage (Inference) coupled with user role and rights management (RBAC) and other security mechanisms.
- Data interfaces: These ensure seamless integration with existing data management systems (HIS, LIS, RIS, PMS) and enable secure data exchange.
Steps for implementation
The following steps are necessary to ensure the successful implementation of this project:
- Develop integration platform: Design and build a secure, privacy compliant, easy to integrate, maintainable infrastructure.
- Integrateapp store logic: Establish a marketplace within the platform where AI apps can be found, compared, installed and used with one click.
- Populate the app store with apps : in-house development and provision of apps that cover standard use cases.
- Partnerships for app development: Collaboration with healthcare organizations, IT service providers and manufacturers of data management systems (HIS, LIS, RIS, PMS) to jointly develop new apps and make them available to other companies in the AI app store and directly in the respective systems.
Status quo
- The basebox AI_ platform is in open beta testing.
- An organization can be set up here.
- Hospitals and clinics are testing the platform and providing extensive feedback.
- Apps are being developed and piloted with hospital partners
- Seed funding phase from September 2024.
- The pitch deck can be requested from basebox co-founder René Herzer.
Disclaimer
Due to their dimensions, the figures given in this document are by nature only approximate and not exact. They serve as a basis for these considerations.
Sources
