survey<\/a> found medication-related harm also poses a major financial burden on healthcare systems worldwide. <\/p>\n\u201cGlobally, the cost associated with medication errors has been estimated at US$42 billion [$72.2b] annually.\u201d <\/p>\n
It says in the US alone, 1.3 million people experienced preventable medication-related harm.<\/p>\n
Orchestral for Prescription Safety will cross-reference a patient\u2019s age, sex and other characteristics, and what they have already been prescribed. <\/p>\n
![\"McCrae]()
McCrae Tech has already made its first sale, to an unnamed customer in the US. Orchestral CEO Lucy Porter says she’s fielding interest from around the world, including the Middle East. Photo \/ Sylvie Whinray <\/p>\n
It will also check The New Zealand Formulary (a national database that includes information on pharmaceuticals and their use), among other safeguards, Porter says.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI will make it a lot better,\u201d Davis told the Herald, talking about artificial intelligence in health in general. <\/p>\n
The new semi-retired academic says any electronic system is a step-up from the mistakes that used ot be caused by doctors\u2019 handwriting.<\/p>\n
By automating multiple cross-checks, \u201cAI should make it impossible\u201d to make a prescription mistake,\u2019 Davis says, if it\u2019s implemented correctly.<\/p>\n
Porter says all Orchestral\u2019s AI agents are \u201cgoverned\u201d or operating within strict rules and builds on decades of data storage engineering, first within Orion and now sput into McCrae Tech. Orchestral has three components:<\/p>\n
Health Information Platform (HIP): Ingests data from any source and delivers trusted, structured, standardised, and compliant health data;Health Agent Library (HAL): Provides a governed registry of AI building blocks for the entire health system andHealth AI Tooling (HAT): Empowers data analysts and scientists to build agentic workflows, business intelligence reports and more.<\/p>\n
NZIER sees billions in AI gains<\/p>\n
\u201cAI, if used correctly in healthcare, can double, triple or quadruple the throughput in primary care,\u201d McCrae says. <\/p>\n
A New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) report, commissioned by McCrae Tech, says \u201cAI can lift system-wide productivity by improving the accuracy and timelines of prediction, diagnosis, treatment and surgery, reducing avoidable costs and downstream complications\u201d.<\/p>\n
Porter says prescriptions are just one of 50,000 healthcare workflows that could be improved by her firm\u2019s software.<\/p>\n
And research indicates possible big gains from those improvements.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI adoption could generate substantial fiscal savings, with international evidence indicating a 5% to 10% reduction in health system costs,\u201d NZIER says. <\/p>\n
Approximately a third of the gains would stem from reduced administrative expenditure.<\/p>\n
Over 10 years, the cost-savings would be $15 billion to $31b, NZIER said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is equivalent to the cost of providing an additional six months to a year of health system services.\u201d<\/p>\n
NZIER also says AI productivity gains could address barriers to healthcare access at a time when \u201cnearly half of all general practices have closed their books to new patients\u201d.<\/p>\n
AI taking jobs?<\/p>\n
Porter says there should be no fears about AI taking jobs in the badly overstretched health system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see a lot of articles about burnout and clinicians moving offshore,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy hope is that AI will not only improve outcomes for patients but enable clinicians to do the things they really love, and that a lot of their paperwork will be removed.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCrae adds, \u201cYou still want a clinician to deliver you terrible news or guide you on a health journey. These are tools that support those clinicians. AI is a clever assistant.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Down to AI\u2019<\/p>\n
He sees AI on a par with major public-health breakthroughs such as antibiotics and modern hygiene.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s still early days, but the start-up has garnered global interest, McCrae says. A yet-to-be-named customer has been signed in New Mexico.<\/p>\n
McCrae, who had his most recent brain tumour surgery just weeks ago, is now 60 months post-diagnosis.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still going for quite good runs,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not quite as fast as I used to be. I\u2019ve lost a few clicks. But I\u2019m feeling healthy and a lot of that\u2019s down to AI. It\u2019s the most impactful technology I\u2019ve seen in healthcare in 40 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald\u2019s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe family would be at the beach, swimming, and I\u2019d be jammed in the corner, AI\u2019ing,\u201d he says.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[3255,365,363,364,9442,54058,8604,6659,15166,12474,63726,311,134,27783,57505,8454,1739,5983,1044,100657,117,111,139,69,52862,1597,32221,43296,1314,11590,312,8183,1037,1324,6211,145,210,61,42032,6305,5977,2963],"class_list":["post-338648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-address","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-better","tag-billions","tag-caused","tag-deadly","tag-deaths","tag-dollars","tag-errors","tag-founder","tag-health","tag-healthtech","tag-ian","tag-including","tag-launches","tag-levels","tag-management","tag-mccrae","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-orion","tag-patient","tag-prescription","tag-puts","tag-road","tag-save","tag-says","tag-software","tag-startup","tag-stop","tag-system","tag-technology","tag-through","tag-to","tag-toll","tag-tool","tag-which","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}