Nvidia's new AI nurses treat patients for $9 an hour. Here's what they can do, from colonoscopy screenings to loneliness companionship
Nvidia
- Nvidia is working with Hippocratic AI to provide patients with cheap AI nurses.
- The AI nurses offer a wide range of services, including screenings and medication onboarding.
- Hippocratic AI stated that AI nurses can help offset the growing US nurse shortage.
This week, California tech giant Nvidia announced a new collaboration with Hippocratic AI: AI-generated nurses, for only $9 an hour.
In a demo video, a woman named Sarah meets Rachel, her "AI care manager" who checks in with her after her appendectomy.
Rachel asks Sarah if she was able to get her prescribed medications, reassures her that the medications are safe to take considering her penicillin allergy, and to avoid carbs during recovery, as Sarah is diabetic.
AI nurses are one of the latest AI innovations to offer personalized and cheaper healthcare services. According to Gizmodo, over 40 healthcare companies are already testing the technology.
The move to using low-cost virtual nurses brings into question the safety of trusting a non-human medical professional, as well as what it means for US nurses, who've already been quitting their jobs en masse partly due to being underpaid.
AI nurses will answer "low-risk" calls
Hippocratic AI
Currently available for testing, Hippocratic AI's website features a roster of glowing, glass-skinned nurses who cover a fairly wide swath of treatment areas, including:
Pre-op services for procedures like cataract surgeries and hysterectomies
Discharge
Chronic care for conditions like diabetes, Alzheimer's, breast cancer, and asthma
Nutrition
Health risk assessment
Explanation of benefits
Ancillary program enrollment
Screenings for PAP smear, mammograms, and colonoscopies
Remote patient monitoring
Clinical trial recruiting
New medication onboarding
Insulin supply check-in
Dialysis continuity
Assisted living services, including a loneliness companion
In some cases, you can even select nurses based on your bedside manner preferences, such as "engaging" or "direct," according to the website.
Trusting AI with medical issues is dicey
Nvidia isn't the first AI company scrambling to enter the healthcare space. Ventures range from tackling AI patient consultation and mental health services to obesity treatment and protecting brain health.
While AI has had some success in diagnosing diseases even human doctors missed, other AI tools used for tech websites and sci-fi writing led to confounding errors.
It's too soon to say how effective glossy AI nurses will be compared to real-life ones in potentially spotting more subtle symptoms or offering adequate compassion to a distressed patient.
It doesn't fix bigger US healthcare problems
Hippocratic AI offers its cheap, readily accessible AI nurses as a solution to the growing healthcare worker shortage.
It still doesn't address the issues in the US healthcare system that make AI nurses appealing in the first place, including astronomic bills and the continual shuttering of hospitals. As Futurism pointed out, the nursing shortage isn't caused by nurses demanding sky-high salaries, but "by hospital cost-cutting leading to abysmal working conditions, unfair contracts, and low wages."
Time will tell how consistently accurate AI nurses can be.
But even if they are, outsourcing medical care to polite, uninvested avatars may be more like placing a pixelated band-aid on top of a spreading infection.