Kaiser Permanente Is Trying to Upend Healthcare with AI Wearables and At-Home Care

Kaiser Permanente is bringing generative AI, large language models, wearables, and other advanced technologies to patients’ homes, transforming the traditional healthcare model to provide more continuous, proactive, and patient-centered care.

Shifting healthcare to the home: Kaiser Permanente is embracing a new paradigm where care is delivered to patients at home, rather than requiring them to visit medical facilities:

• Patients are increasingly demanding that their healthcare come to them, in real-time and when they want it, similar to the convenience of services like Amazon Prime and virtual meetings.
• Kaiser Permanente, with its 40 hospitals and 618 medical facilities, is leveraging next-gen wearables, data collection, and AI tools to meet patients where they are, moving from episodic to continuous care.

Leveraging advanced technologies for objective metrics: Modern technologies such as LLMs, generative AI, wearables, IoT, edge computing, and digital twins are enabling the medical industry to capture real-time, objective data:

• Smartphone apps and wearables can capture vital signs and digital diagnostics for patient-reported outcome and experience measures (PROMs and PREMs), providing more proactive and predictive care.
• This shift from subjective to objective metrics is transforming medical practice, moving from the “analog past” to a “high-fidelity future.”

Enhancing patient and clinician experiences: The adoption of these technologies is not only benefiting patients but also improving the clinician experience:

• Many doctors who retired due to burnout after COVID are returning to practice because of the hope these tools provide, allowing them to spend more quality time with patients.
• Healthcare systems are “hungry” for these capabilities, as they can make medical work easier and more efficient, with doctors demanding access to these tools.

Caring for caregivers and enabling at-home care: Generative AI is also being used to support caregivers and enable more patients to receive care at home:

• AI-powered monitoring systems can help caregivers, such as those caring for family members with dementia, by providing 24/7 monitoring and alerts when necessary.
• These tools can unburden caregivers, who often make sacrifices to their own health while providing billions of dollars worth of unpaid care.
• More patients prefer to be “admitted” for care at home, where they can be visited and monitored virtually and physically by medical professionals.

Broader implications: The integration of advanced technologies in healthcare is not only transforming the patient experience but also fundamentally changing the nature of medical practice and care delivery. As more healthcare shifts to the home and becomes continuous rather than episodic, it has the potential to improve outcomes, reduce costs, and enhance the well-being of both patients and caregivers. However, the successful implementation of these technologies will require addressing challenges related to data privacy, security, and interoperability, as well as ensuring equitable access to these innovations for all patients.