How can AI be used to reduce administrative burden and better support healthcare professionals?

AI can be especially valuable in healthcare when it reduces administrative pressure and gives healthcare professionals more time for human contact, attention and professional judgment. The central question is not whether AI can replace healthcare workers, but how it can support them in tasks that currently take up a great deal of time, energy and focus.

A first use case is summarizing and structuring information. Healthcare professionals work with patient records, handovers, emails, reports, protocols and meeting notes. AI can help summarize long texts, organize relevant points, draft reports or prepare information for a consultation or team meeting. This reduces the time professionals spend searching, copying and rewriting information.

A second use case is documentation support. AI can turn spoken notes into draft reports, prepare letters, help complete standard forms or draft handover notes. The healthcare professional remains responsible for checking the content, but AI can provide a first version that is faster to review and adjust.

A third use case is internal knowledge support. AI can help staff find answers more quickly in protocols, policy documents, guidelines or internal work instructions. This is particularly useful in organizations where information is spread across many systems. A well-designed AI assistant can bring the right information to the surface faster, provided that the sources are reliable, up to date and properly secured.

AI can also support scheduling, triage support and process optimization. In each case, it must remain clear where AI is only advising and where human control is required. In healthcare, privacy, data security, explainability and accountability are essential. AI should never become a black box that makes decisions without professional review.

The greatest value of AI in healthcare is therefore not replacing people, but reducing administrative work, improving access to information and creating more time for the core of care: helping people. Robbert van Empel explains in his keynotes and workshops how healthcare organizations can use AI in practical, safe and human-centered ways. As the author of De Grote Verandering and Vraag het AI / Ask AI, he helps leaders and professionals understand what AI means for work, organization and responsibility in healthcare.