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AWS is assuring that the AI that’s being built is reliable, responsible and trustworthy

At AWS re:Invent 2024, Las Vegas Dr. Angela Shippy, Senior Physician Executive at AWS, discusses how technology is reshaping healthcare—from generative AI to predictive analytics and secure cloud solutions.

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Healthcare is at a transformative juncture, with technology playing a pivotal role in reshaping patient care and clinical workflows. Speaking with Shipra Sinha, Lead Analyst- Industry Intelligence Group (IIG), CyberMedia Research (CMR) At AWS re:Invent 2024, Las Vegas, Dr. Angela Shippy, Senior Physician Executive at AWS, discusses how innovations such as generative AI, predictive analytics, and secure cloud platforms are driving this evolution. In this exclusive interview, she shares insights on AWS’s vision for healthcare innovation, its strategies for addressing challenges, and its commitment to empowering underserved communities.

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Tools like Amazon Connect enable seamless interaction with patients, fostering personalised care and improving telehealth delivery.

Angela is the Senior physician executive and Clinical innovation lead responsible to lead the business development team for AWS global healthcare and nonprofits.

What emerging technologies are transforming the healthcare industry?

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There are two significant areas where healthcare leaders and clinicians are focusing their attention. First, improving the patient experience to achieve better outcomes, second, streamlining workflows to ease administrative burdens for healthcare workers, enabling them to focus on patient care. Generative AI (GenAI) presents opportunities to summarise interactions, such as clinical notes, lab results, and radiology reports. Additionally, GenAI can empower patients by providing accessible information about their medications, prescriptions, and care schedules, helping them take a more active role in their own health management.

What challenges does AWS face in implementing emerging technologies, and how is the company addressing them?

One of the primary challenges is ensuring customers have the right infrastructure in place to leverage emerging technologies. AWS provides a comprehensive set of cloud services, including advancements like AWS SageMaker and Bedrock, which enable automation of complex workflows. For example, health tech companies like Healthify, using AWS’s tools, offer clinicians real-time patient information, enhancing personalised care. AWS also focuses on creating reliable, responsible, and trustworthy AI solutions by embedding guardrails and best practices into its offerings, ensuring these technologies align with clinicians’ needs while maintaining patient-centric care.

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What role do data analytics and predictive modelling play in healthcare decision-making?

Predictive analytics has become crucial, especially during events like the COVID-19 pandemic, where tracking patient volumes, ICU capacity, and PPE supplies is vital. By aggregating and visualising data on dashboards, healthcare providers could make informed, real-time decisions. Today, customers seek a similarly comprehensive view of operational data—from staffing needs to patient challenges. AWS collaborates with customers to integrate diverse datasets, enabling predictive analytics to provide actionable insights, improve resource planning, and enhance patient outcomes.

How does AWS ensure technological advancements in healthcare reach underserved communities?

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AWS collaborates with customers to identify underserved areas using existing data and helps design solutions tailored to those communities. Additionally, AWS supports nonprofit organisations through grants, enabling them to extend healthcare services to underprivileged regions. By working alongside customers, AWS ensures equitable access to healthcare innovations, fostering better outcomes for underserved populations.

Healthcare leaders are prioritizing two key areas: enhancing the patient experience to improve outcomes, and streamlining workflows to reduce administrative burdens, allowing clinicians to focus more on patient care.

What impact do you foresee from the widespread adoption of telemedicine and remote monitoring?

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Telemedicine adoption surged in recent years, with customers now looking to enhance these platforms for greater accessibility and functionality. AWS supports telemedicine providers by helping them build scalable platforms with features like chatbots and 24/7 access to healthcare professionals. Tools like Amazon Connect enable seamless interaction with patients, fostering personalised care and improving telehealth delivery. Customers are increasingly focused on refining their telehealth offerings to cater to patients’ evolving needs.

What are the new innovative technologies that you’re working on to enhance the patient engagement?

One of the partners, Pieces Technology is building one of these platforms, both an inpatient platform and an ambulatory platform that is providing clinicians with real-time information about their patients. It’s important because when you have a real-time summary of what’s happening with the patient means that the physician can take faster action. Another part of the platform allows nurses to summarize what happened so that when it’s time for shift change, they’re able to give a complete report to the next nurse who’s coming on. That’s also a huge game-changer right now. Here’s an opportunity to have it completely summarized, so that they’re having a meaningful interaction.

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AWS provides customers with tools to create secure, regulation-compliant environments, including HIPAA and GDPR, while offering flexibility to tailor security levels to specific tasks or datasets.

Pieces technology is utilizing a discharge note. It’s a summary that gives information as the patient is getting ready for discharge. That’s incredibly important because when you have a case manager, a physician and a social worker all on the same page about the patient’s progress every day, you can have really good discharge plan that the patient their family understand and the patient can continue to have a good outcome when they get outside the hospital.

How does AWS safeguard sensitive patient data with robust security measures?

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Security is the top priority. One of the things that we’re doing with this broad and deep set of services is we’re giving them the technology they need inside of those services to be able to have secure environments.

We provide customers with the tools to architect secure environments compliant with regulations such as HIPAA and GDPR. AWS also offers flexibility, allowing customers to tailor security levels to specific tasks or datasets. By sharing successful security practices and enabling peer collaboration, AWS ensures healthcare organisations can protect sensitive patient data effectively.

How does AWS balance cutting-edge technologies with the risk of tech overload for healthcare providers?

AWS employs a “working backwards” approach, starting with customers’ most pressing priorities and addressing one issue at a time. This collaborative method prevents technology overload by focusing on solving specific pain points incrementally. By aligning solutions with customer needs, AWS ensures technology enhances rather than complicates healthcare workflows.

What is your vision for the future of health systems in India and globally?

There are many patients who need assistance in improving and managing their health, and our goal is to address this need at scale. In both India and the US, there are regions with limited resources, and scaling healthcare delivery to meet the needs of these populations will rely on technology.

The technology being developed by AWS aims to ensure widespread connectivity, allowing patients—many of whom have smartphones—to access care at their fingertips. This technology will enable us to provide appropriate levels of care tailored to each patient’s location and condition while connecting them to specialized centres of excellence when necessary.

The future of healthcare will focus on improving access and making care readily available to patients whenever and however they need it. Technology, particularly generative AI, will be pivotal in making this process more efficient, offering patients personalized communication and timely support.

Is AWS undertaking any specific initiatives to enhance or improve the clinical trial process? If so, what are they?

AWS is partnering with healthcare and life sciences organizations to accelerate drug discovery. With the vast amounts of data involved and the extended timelines in drug development, our services enable organizations to analyse and consolidate data more efficiently, allowing them to reach their endpoints faster.

By bringing together researchers focused on rare diseases, we are facilitating collaboration that speeds up diagnoses and treatment options. Each time our customers unite their data, they significantly accelerate the process. What once required hours of analysis by an individual can now be completed in days or weeks, thanks to AWS technology.

Additionally, we help our customers sift through medical records to identify potential candidates for clinical trials. By defining patient populations that would benefit from specific drugs or therapies, we assist in finding the right patients, ultimately helping to bring therapies to market more quickly.

Dr. Angela Shippy

Senior Physician Executive, AWS

By Shipra Sinha

 

maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in

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