Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University<\/a>.<\/p>\nHer tool is designed to save staff time and help patients receive faster access to care by flagging missing details, drafting justification letters, and creating a checklist with action items for staff before they submit the request to insurers.<\/p>\n
Tetrault\u2019s tool also is a perfect example of how Cedars-Sinai is empowering employees to use AI to solve common healthcare problems and improve patient care, said Mouneer Odeh, MA, chief data and artificial intelligence officer at Cedars-Sinai.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see artificial intelligence as an opportunity to rethink how we deliver care and run our operations,\u201d Odeh said. \u201cOur employees are our first step in identifying how new technologies can become part of our workflows, and their willingness to adopt these technologies drives our innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n
During Cedars-Sinai\u2019s \u201cPrompt-A-Thons,\u201d employees compete to develop AI tools to solve operational, clinical and administrative challenges. Nearly 80 groups submitted proposals at the summer competition. Topics ranged from personalizing patient education to assessing patients\u2019 risk for pharmaceutical side effects.<\/p>\n
Ten employee teams were then selected to present their AI solutions at a final showcase in front of a panel of judges. Second- and third-place presentations aimed to streamline the Emergency Department trauma documentation auditing process and provide faster, more integrated reporting for medical center data.<\/p>\n
During her winning presentation, Tetrault estimated that her pre-authorization tool could save 450 hours per year per authorization staff member.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to the American Medical Association, prior authorizations take up roughly 13 hours a week of any given employee\u2019s time,\u201d Tetrault said. \u201cUnfortunately, many of these authorizations are denied due to missing information or submissions not matching the payer\u2019s policy. Most appealed denials get overturned.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chain Insights: Turning Prompt-A-Thon Experience Into Action<\/p>\n
The Cedars-Sinai Supply Chain Department won a 2025 Prompt-A-Thon for designing an app to help streamline nursing paperwork and give nurses more time for direct patient care. The app, Chain Insights, monitors supplies, tracks back orders, and flags approved substitutes for items that might become unavailable.<\/p>\n
Chain Insights, built by a Cedars-Sinai team from Supply Chain Operational Excellence, Enterprise Information Services and Nursing, was first tested as a pilot on an inpatient floor at Cedars-Sinai. Early data shows that it reduced nurses\u2019 supply-ordering time by 1 1\/2 minutes per call.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis time savings adds up to roughly seven hours each day once fully rolled out for the nursing team,\u201d said Nausheen Ahmed, executive director of Supply Chain Operational Excellence. \u201cWith approximately 300 calls to our supply chain team each day, this modest but important efficiency means nurses can reclaim time to focus on their most important role, patient care.\u201d<\/p>\n
For supply chain staff, knowing how much inventory is available and where it is housed is critical, especially when a nurse calls with a need for supplies. Each call requires a detailed discussion including when the supplies must be in hand and possible substitutions if an item is on back order.<\/p>\n
Chain Insights replaces the phone call with an app that precisely locates inventory. The app also identifies unnecessary items to help clear space, a \u201cquieter win\u201d but one that compounds over time.<\/p>\n
Regina Chung, MSN, RN, CMSRN, a nurse at Cedars-Sinai, uses Chain Insights every shift.<\/p>\n
\u201cChain Insights has made it easy to quickly order the supplies I need while on the go, even while I am walking in the halls between patients,\u201d Chung said. \u201cI always receive the correct product and quantity, and when items are out of stock, it tells me immediately, so I am not aimlessly waiting. These efficiencies allow me to focus on providing exceptional care to our patients.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leaders from Supply Chain Operational Excellence designed data models, decision frameworks and inventory intelligence that tell the tool how to think about supply risk and priorities.<\/p>\n
Cedars-Sinai employees from Enterprise Information Services wrote the code and built the infrastructure, turning that back-end logic into a working application. Nursing colleagues provided continuous frontline input, including real-world testing of the tool to ensure it solved the right problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis effort stands as an example of what happens when teams build something together to solve a real problem,\u201d Odeh said. \u201cIt’s also a signal of what’s possible when the people closest to the work are empowered to build the solution, and there’s more to come. There is nothing more motivating than seeing knowledge be translated into solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University is advancing groundbreaking research and educating future leaders in medicine, biomedical sciences and allied health sciences.\u00a0Learn more<\/a>\u00a0about the university.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BYLINE: Cara Martinez Newswise \u2014 LOS ANGELES (Aug. 13, 2026) —\u00a0A Cedars-Sinai clinical research coordinator won a recent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,1378,80],"class_list":["post-592578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-newswise","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}