By Simon Jones, Chief Information and Digital Officer
AI is having a moment in healthcare. But as with most things, activity does not equal outcomes.
Across the industry, organizations are racing to adopt artificial intelligence—often driven by pressure to keep up, reduce costs, or signal innovation. The real risk isn’t moving too slowly; it’s deploying AI too broadly, too quickly, or in places where it adds complexity rather than clarity.
At Altais, we’ve taken a more deliberate approach. Instead of asking where can we use AI, we’ve focused on a harder question: where does AI genuinely reduce friction while preserving trust, judgment, and human connection?
Where AI Is Actually Making a Difference
A few use cases stood out early.
The first is clinical documentation. Administrative burden remains one of the most persistent drivers of clinician frustration and burnout. The introduction of EMRs increased documentation time and placed a screen and keyboard between clinicians and their patients. AI-powered scribes—when thoughtfully integrated into existing EHR workflows—can improve the patient visit experience and reduce after-hours documentation, while maintaining accuracy, auditability, and clinician oversight. The goal isn’t automation for its own sake, but to reduce clinician workload and restore focus to the patient encounter itself.
The second is prior authorization workflows. Prior authorization remains a high-friction, high-variability process across healthcare. We’re applying AI to accelerate information gathering, normalize data inputs, and reduce manual handoffs—supporting faster turnaround times while preserving appropriate utilization review and governance. When applied responsibly, AI enhances oversight rather than bypassing it. In our approach, AI can approve authorizations when criteria are clearly met and escalate cases to a human reviewer when additional judgment is required.
In both cases, the value of AI comes not from novelty, but from a clear focus on outcomes.
Applying AI Where It Removes Burden—not Judgment
Our focus is to bring healthcare-native AI copilots into targeted administrative and care-management workflows—areas where tasks are repeatable but inconsistent and difficult to systematize through traditional rules-based automation. AI enables the ingestion of variable inputs and the summarization of outputs into normalized formats that can then be acted upon by systems or humans.
Examples include AI chatbots that answer questions about benefits, as well as the prior authorization workflows described above. These tools are best used to support functions such as case summarization, documentation synthesis, and information retrieval—areas where cognitive load is high. Just as importantly, AI must not supplant complex clinical decision-making, which must remain firmly human-led.
From a technology standpoint, what matters most is how these tools are deployed: embedded into workflows, governed appropriately, and evaluated continuously for accuracy, bias, and impact. At Altais, AI is designed to assist—not decide—and to scale support without diminishing accountability.
Responsible Innovation Requires Saying No
One of the most important lessons we’ve learned is that not every problem is best solved with AI. In some cases, process redesign, clearer data standards, or improved interoperability deliver more value than automation alone.
Responsible innovation requires discernment. It means piloting carefully, defining success metrics early, and being willing to pause, recalibrate, or walk away when outcomes don’t align with intent. Just as importantly, it means earning trust—among clinicians, patients, and partners—through transparency and consistency, not technology promises.
What We’re Watching Next
Looking ahead, we’re closely watching how AI can further support workflow orchestration, data quality, removal of barriers to care, and clinician experience—particularly in areas where fragmentation and administrative overhead continue to impact care delivery. At the same time, we remain cautious about extending AI into domains that require nuanced clinical judgment or introduce unnecessary risk.
Our focus remains the same: apply AI where it demonstrably supports care teams, improves outcomes and experience, and strengthens trust.
Amplifying What Makes Care Human
The future of healthcare isn’t about replacing humans. It’s about using technology to create space for what makes care human: attention, empathy, and sound clinical judgment.
When applied with discipline and purpose, AI can help restore time, reduce burnout, and improve experiences for both patients and providers. That’s the kind of innovation we’re committed to at Altais—innovation with integrity, grounded in real-world use and guided by accountability.