Artificial intelligence is developed to help nurses to reduce their workload

The PROFIT project examines how artificial intelligence could support the work of nurses. The technology developed in the project will be tested with nursing students of Turku UAS.

Various digital tasks, such as patient registration, reviewing patient information, familiarising with instructions and giving them, take a significant part of nurses’ daily working hours. Reducing the time consumed on these tasks with the help of better technological solutions could free up working time for patient encounters and lighten the nurses’ workload.

The international PROFIT project aims to reduce the workload of nurses by utilising artificial intelligence. Turku UAS plays an important role in the project in developing technology that facilitates the work of nurses, both in terms of research and as a provider of practical feedback.

Turku UAS investigates and examines the usability of new technologies and solutions from the perspective of healthcare personnel by developing an acceptance model. The acceptance model is used to explain why nurses accept or disapprove of the use of a technology in nursing.

− Nurse-centricity is at the core of the project. The developed technology will be brought to our nursing students for testing. This way, we will learn how development should be done to promote end-user acceptability of new technology and prevent it from being perceived as a threat or as clumsy in terms of usability, says Senior Lecturer Paula Savolainen from Turku UAS.

Before the technology can be introduced for testing in different teaching situations, a lot of planning and preparatory work needs to be done related to, for example, permits and research ethics.

As the technology is constantly being developed during the project, students will have to test technology at different stages of development. The first, a stripped-down version of the AI-assisted part, is expected to be available for testing during spring 2025.

− Testing gives companies valuable feedback on the functionality of the technology, and at the same time nursing students get their first contact with technology, which in some form will be part of their future working life, Savolainen says.

In addition to Turku UAS, Finnish participants in the project include VTT, the University of Eastern Finland, the Northern Savo and Southwest Finland wellbeing services counties, MediConsult, Oiva Health and Solita. The project is funded by Business Finland’s Health 360 Finland programme.

The PROFIT project is the first ITEA project of Turku UAS. ITEA is an European consortium of companies and research organisations promoting software innovation and digital transition, which aims to promote the creation of concrete business applications.

More than 30 percent of nurses’ working hours could be saved

According to Jouni Kaartinen, Senior Scientist at VTT, artificial intelligence could, for instance, automatically and illustratively provide relevant patient information to professionals through a graphical or voice interface. AI could also be an excellent assistant in instructing patients when they are searching for help, during their hospital stay, and afterwards. This could facilitate access to the right service, reduce repeat visits, and improve treatment monitoring.

− For instance, the German consultancy TLGG has estimated that if utilised properly, artificial intelligence could save more than 30 percent of nurses’ working hours, which they could spend on more valuable tasks – meeting customers and providing care, says Kaartinen.

Kaartinen says that the difficulty of obtaining necessary data has significantly hampered the development of AI solutions in healthcare. Healthcare involves so much professional terminology that it is paramount to train a truly useful conversational AI with comprehensive material: authentic anonymised speech data, patient data, and other healthcare documentation.

− As a lot of health data is already digitised, obtaining it securely for research and product development creates significant advantages. However, this has been complicated from a legal perspective. Anonymised and consent-based data would ultimately benefit all parties, says Kaartinen.

In the project’s initial phase, AI solutions will be trained using data from nursing students’ practice tasks and various simulated data.

Several ethical issues still must be resolved. Despite the use of AI, decision-making and responsibility remain with professionals. According to Kaartinen, AI could not, for instance, make direct entries in patient or customer records without the professional’s separate approval. Instead, AI could make an entry suggestion that the professional can either accept as is or with modifications. The project examines the acceptability and ethics of AI-assisted solutions from the perspectives of both nurses and customers.

VTT’s press release