UC Davis Health Launches AI Tool to Curb Documentation Burden

University of California (UC) Davis Health and virtual practice management platform LiveCare Corp. announced the exploration of an artificial intelligence (AI) functionality that interprets care team conversations in real time to reveal insights that may improve patient care, clinician experience, and billing accuracy during the UC Davis Health Summit at the JP Morgan Conference.

The functionality, known as Clinii, was announced at the UC Davis Health Future and CEO Summit during the JP Morgan 41st Healthcare Summit. The press release states that the tool will allow healthcare organizations to leverage patient and clinician experiences and billing information to help automate documentation and enhance billing accuracy. The functionality will be available embedded in LiveCare's platform.

"Documentation burden is one of the major drivers of provider burnout and historically technologies such as EHRs have led to increased burden and provider 'pajama time' on after-hours administrative work," said Ashish Atreja, MD, chief information officer and chief digital health officer at UC Davis Health, in the press release. "As part of the UC Davis Digital Collaborative for Innovation and Validation (Digital CoLab), we're excited to explore how LiveCare's technology can reduce this burden."

The Digital CoLab serves as UC Davis Health’s cloud innovation center in collaboration with Amazon Web Services and is focused on health equity. The Digital CoLab’s mission to address challenges around digital health equity through global collaboration, open-source innovation, and digital transformation to develop solutions such as Clinii.

"Some of the most critical insights about patient care are hidden in day-to-day workflows and conversations between patients, nurses, physicians and ancillary care providers. By removing administrative burdens that contribute to clinician burnout we are simultaneously improving clinician experiences and alleviating workforce shortages in the industry," said Peri Avitan, CEO and co-founder of LiveCare Corp., in the press release.

This announcement is UC Davis Health’s latest work in healthcare AI and digital health.

In November, the health system launched a collaboration with venture capital firm General Catalyst to support the health system’s digital transformation and drive innovations using AI and digital health technologies.

Under the partnership, UC Davis Health will leverage General Catalyst’s network of companies to drive these innovations across several areas, including healthcare delivery, research, education, public service, operations, and outcomes.

The partnership also includes a knowledge-sharing component, under which the two organizations will form a joint committee to ensure strategic alignment, mutual accountability, and operational connectivity between them while exploring further collaboration opportunities, including co-development of new businesses and products, services, and technologies, using UC Davis Health as an innovation center.

Earlier that month, UC Davis researchers also received a $15 million, five-year grant renewal from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to fund AI projects aimed at improving breast cancer screening and risk prediction while reducing health disparities.

The grant will fund three new projects using AI to predict which patients with no history of breast cancer are at high risk of being diagnosed with advanced cancer, identify factors contributing to breast cancer screening inequities, and develop a risk-based approach to flag patients who may be at higher risk of a cancer recurrence surveillance failure.

Editor’s note: This article was updated at 10:25am ET on January 10, 2023 to clarify that the UC Davis group involved in the announcement is UC Davis Health and that the functionality will be explored as part of the UC Davis Health Collaborative for Innovation and Validation. The article also now reflects that the announcement was made during UC Davis Health Summit at the JP Morgan Conference.