Pieces, a healthcare AI company, today announced that it has been selected for a new global program from Amazon Web Services (AWS) supporting organizations that are developing solutions to advance health equity.
Through the program, AWS offers AWS credits and customized technical expertise to selected organizations around the world that want to use AWS services to improve health outcomes and health equity in any of the following areas: 1) increasing access to health services for underserved communities; 2) addressing social determinants of health; and 3) leveraging data to promote more equitable and inclusive systems of care. The support from AWS will advance the deployment of Pieces’ AI-driven clinical handover tool in the UK to improve the quality of care and reduce disparities by increasing standardization of communication among care teams.
Clinical handover is defined as an exchange of information between doctors about a patient when there is a transfer in responsibility for that patient. Communication gaps, sometimes within peer-to-peer handover processes, are estimated to contribute up to 80% of medical errors, according to the Joint Commission. Standardizing communication can reduce error and biases that may unwittingly creep into clinical decision-making. With appropriate institutional and patient consents, the Pieces clinical handover tool works by reading through a patient’s hospital record and then using natural language generation, automatically writing a standardized and modifiable summary of the patient’s status in plain clinical language.
“We are incredibly excited to receive this support from AWS, which recognizes the valuable role AI, and specifically natural language generation, can play in achieving high-quality, equitable healthcare,” says Ruben Amarasingham, MD, CEO of Pieces, Inc.
Support from AWS will help Pieces to refine and scale the reach of the platform to the UK and support the rollout of the Pieces AI-facilitated clinical handover tool in UK hospital trusts.
“AWS believes individual health outcomes should not depend on socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, or neighborhood, “said Maggie Carter, Global Lead, Social Impact at AWS. “Cloud technology can help address the inequities in global health that have been amplified by the pandemic. Through this program, we look forward to helping Pieces and other organizations worldwide use AWS to advance health equity and improve health outcomes.”
