this episode is about the academic paper that details a study on Penda Health's AI Consult, a large language model-based clinical decision support tool deployed in primary and urgent care clinics in Nairobi, Kenya.
The research aimed to evaluate the tool's impact on clinical quality, usability, and patient outcomes in a real-world setting, moving beyond prior offline evaluations. Findings indicated a meaningful reduction in clinical errors across history-taking, investigations, diagnoses, and treatments for clinicians using AI Consult, though no significant difference in patient-reported outcomes was observed.
The study emphasizes the importance of clinically-aligned implementation and active deployment for successful AI integration in healthcare, highlighting that AI Consult also served as a continuous learning tool for clinicians.