Nurses are lining the streets outside a San Francisco hospital Monday morning protesting the use of artificial intelligence in health care.
Members of the California Nurses Association were gathering outside Kaiser San Francisco, saying the hospital industry is rushing to implement what they call untested and unregulated technology.
They say AI is happening at a number of hospital systems, and Kaiser is one of the earliest adopters.
Kaiser says the new tools can save lives. On its website, the company references a monitoring system that can prevent emergencies before they happen. The program automatically analyzes hospital patients’ electronic health data and can alert medical staff if a patient is at risk of a serious decline.
Nurses argue technology can’t detect other patient needs.
"No computer, no AI can replace a human touch," said Amy Grewal, a registered nurse. "It cannot hold your loved one’s hand. You cannot teach a computer how to have empathy."
Some AI experts argue the new technology can help doctors develop better treatments by making it easy to access things like patient data or information on new drugs.
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Kaiser released the following statement Monday in response to the nurses actions.
"Kaiser Permanente is empowering nurses with state-of-the-art tools and technologies that support our mission of providing high-quality, affordable health care to best meet our members’ and patients’ needs. We have consistently invested in and embraced technology that enables nurses to work more effectively, resulting in improved patient outcomes and nurse satisfaction, and we will continue to do so.
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"At Kaiser Permanente, artificial intelligence (AI) tools don’t make medical decisions, our physicians and care teams are always at the center of decision making with our patients. We believe that AI may be able to help our physicians and employees, and enhance our members’ experience. As an organization dedicated to inclusiveness and health equity, we ensure the results from AI tools are correct and unbiased; AI does not replace human assessment."
