by Sam Page
Administrative expenses Accounts for 15-25% of all healthcare spending In the United States, potentially more than $1 trillion per year.
A New review in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology Investigates whether the current landscape of artificial intelligence administration products can help reduce these costs, particularly in the context of gastroenterology practice.
In this question and answer senior author Dr Eric D. Shah, MD, MBAAssociate Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School and Chair Elect, AGA Committee for GI Innovation and Technology, discussed the present and future of specialty-specific AI tools.
What are the main findings of this latest study? Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology?
Shah: There are a lot of new platforms and technologies coming out focused on the administrative side of healthcare.
This focus is not surprising, as administration now accounts for a quarter of all health care spending. There is a clear need to reduce administrative bloat.
Some of these products exist purely to aid administration as we know it.
There is probably a big opportunity to use AI to see if administrative costs are adding value and how we can improve those processes.
Our research focused on AI tools now available in a clinical area: gastroenterology. For now – and this is typical when things are new – there isn’t much out there yet
We are seeing as much promise as what can be delivered. But when you lift the hood, the level of evidence to support the claim is still not quite there.
What products do exist—GI-specific or not—seem to address administrative costs?
Shah: Current AI products focused on healthcare administration often have a fixed concept of expertise.
These tools are solely focused on admitting more patients, which can increase healthcare worker laziness and not necessarily improve patient outcomes or health.
We all have to ask: more is better? Or more just more?
As the number of appointments increases, these tools are also likely to lead to more complexity, more administrative costs.
On the physician side, we are already concerned that the physician-patient relationship is becoming too much of a physician-patient-administrative relationship.
The most promising products are those that are receiving direct. But they tend to be more early-stage products at this point.
How would AI governance tools ideally improve sustainability?
Shah: Research shows that during a routine clinic visit, patients and physicians have about eight minutes to talk about everything, including the physical exam.
How are you supposed to get everything done in eight minutes, even with an artificial intelligence tool?
What AI seems to do in a decade is remove all administrative concerns from that time, including billing issues. That time can be completely replaced with the patient talking to the doctor.
This is a noble goal: time with patients builds trust, and trust creates a situation where you can uncover more and do more.
My concern is that this may not happen. We’ll probably finish the visit in another eight minutes.
What are some GI-specific opportunities for AI tool development?
Shah: There is scope for a liver transplant appt. It would be great to see products that are able to help patients go through that process.
Another possibility would be a tool that could identify suitable clinical trial candidates based on what the physician sees during a routine endoscopy procedure.
We identified some tools that are in development specifically for colonoscopy preparation.
This is important because there are many patients who undergo non-invasive tests for colon cancer screening who do not necessarily follow up with a colonoscopy.
How can AI improve specialty care?
Shah: One reason specialty-specific AI solutions can be more effective is that they can capture the nuances of what patients are going through in specific diseases and specific symptoms.
This possibility is particularly important in gastroenterology, where the ability to describe symptoms can be difficult but essential. The way your gut feels is hard to put into words.
Some of these GI-specific AI solutions are trying to analyze patient sounds to help both patients and physicians ask the right questions of each other.
It also underscores the importance of how we use the time we get back from administrative AI tools.
Gastroenterology appointments, in particular, benefit from time spent talking with the physician.
If artificial intelligence can save time in healthcare, we want to give that time back to our patients, so we can better understand how we can help.
Paper cited: “Artificial intelligence-enabled opportunities to reduce administrative bloat in gastroenterology practices: a scoping review,” Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. 10.1016/j.cgh.2026.06.036
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Previously published Also at michiganmedicine.org Creative Commons License
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