As technology has continued to advance, the artificial intelligence previously only seen in science fiction has started to become more commonplace in business and everyday life. Items such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Echo, and Tesla’s Autopilot feature have rapidly grown in popularity and are not uncommon to see in everyday life. The business world is also embracing artificial technology; The Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2017 Artificial Intelligence in the Real World report interviewed over 200 business executives and found that 75 percent of the respondents stated that artificial intelligence would be actively implemented in their companies in the next three years, and 79 percent believe that artificial intelligence will make their jobs easier and more efficient.
One of the industries with the largest likelihood for heavily implementing machine learning is healthcare, and doing so will likely completely alter the way many facilities are currently running. Artificial intelligence will be able to use algorithms to sift through medical records at a much faster rate than humans can, help individuals monitor their medication, create treatment plans, perform operations without the chance of human error, and assist people in finding a preliminary diagnosis for their symptoms. Home health care is already leaning towards the introduction of artificial intelligence through CareCentrix’s HomeBridge platform, which uses artificial intelligence to create customized health care plans for patients and compare their home location to nearby facilities, which has thus far led to a 38 percent reduction in hospital readmission rates over a 90-day period.
However, if artificial intelligence is to become a mainstay in home health care and other medical facilities, facility owners will need to completely re-evaluate their insurance coverage in order to ensure that they are adequately covered, and agencies will likely need to alter their coverage to take this new way of working into account. Cyber liability insurance, while already crucial, will likely grow to even greater levels of importance as the amount of machinery handling sensitive data or critical operations increases. In addition to being breachable, machines also do unfortunately break, so equipment breakdown coverage will also increase in importance. Workers’ compensation coverage will also likely need to be updated, as introducing more advanced technology into a workplace will also open residents and staff members up to an increased number of potential injuries.
It will also become crucial for facility owners to ensure that their machinery is completely secure, up-to-date, and working. As we have seen in recent cyber attacks, the healthcare sector in particular has a number of liabilities that can be targeted by hackers. Facility owners should run regular audits of their machinery – regardless of whether it has artificial intelligence – and regularly train their employees to ensure that they understand how to work with the machinery and address a potential breach or breakdown.
While artificial intelligence has the capacity to completely revitalize current healthcare practices and improve operations across facilities, it will also introduce a brand new set of liabilities to a sector that already comes with a fair share of risks. In addition to creating new risk management practices, healthcare facilities will need to ensure that they are covered from potential liabilities.
Caitlin Morgan specializes in providing insurance solutions to healthcare facilities, including nursing homes and assisted living facilities, addressing liability, property, cyber and privacy, workers’ comp, risk management, and many other exposures. To find out more about our programs, give us a call at 317.575.4440.