Steve Sammartino. Photo: Christopher Hopkins
Job Reps and HSRs attending the 2024 annual delegates conference likely weren’t expecting a talk on artificial intelligence (AI) let alone to enjoy it so much, but futurist, author and TV presenter Steve Sammartino quickly had everyone seeing the possibilities within healthcare.
The key takeaway from Sammartino’s talk was that you, as nurses and midwives, can use AI right now – for free – to make your professional and personal lives easier. And that you don’t need any special skills to do so.
‘I’m not a medical expert,’ he began, ‘but I’m going to take you through some of my thoughts on how artificial intelligence works, and give you analogies for how you might use it in your day-to-day lives.
‘And then I need something from you,’ he added. ‘What I need from you is to use your imagination, with the skills that you have as nurses and midwives, and imagine how that technology could impact what you do in your job.’
Chat GPT
‘Right now we’re in the middle of an artificial intelligence revolution,’ Sammartino said, ‘and I believe it is the biggest revolution that we have ever seen in humanity because we’ve got a new AI that is language based.’
The reason this is so revolutionary, he explained, is because all human knowledge is in language, so when you have an AI that is language based, you can use it to create just about anything, and you don’t need to understand coding or other previous barriers to entry.
You just speak to it.
‘This is going to change everyone’s job. It’s going to change every industry. Just like electricity changed every industry.’
‘This is going to change everyone’s job,’ Sammartino said. ‘It’s going to change every industry. Just like electricity changed every industry.’
Continuing, he said ‘every single person here is now a computer developer. And here’s how to teach a computer to do anything: you tell it or type it, and that’s it. The AI writes the code for you. Which means if you can imagine it, you can make it.’
As an example, he told a story about seeking a refund from Jetstar for a cancelled flight. When told he couldn’t get a refund, Sammartino went to the Jetstar website and downloaded the Terms & Conditions. He then went to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and downloaded Australia’s commercial airline regulations.
He then put both into Chat GPT with a prompt asking for a one-page letter on why he should get a refund. Within 24 hours the money was back in his account.
From that example, he expanded out: ‘you’ve got a whole lot of regulations, laws, operational procedures, different bits of equipment etc in your hospital. And now you’ve got a brain at your disposal that can analyse data, photos, words on your behalf, can look through terms and conditions, can look at enterprise bargaining agreements…
‘I was just trying to get a refund,’ he added, ‘but the point is that the grunt work can be done for you because what you’ve got is a tool that has a PHd in every single subject, at your disposal. For free.’
AI Agents
‘Where we’re going next is almost sci-fi,’ Sammartino said. ‘They’re called AI agents.’
With an agent you don’t ask it a question; you give it an objective.
Using the free Agent GPT tool, he gave a live example, with the objective: ‘write a plan of ways to use AI tools as a nurse or midwife to improve admin efficiency.’ Once you set the objective, you just you press play and let it go.
In the background, as Sammartino spoke, the AI Agent worked live. ‘Once it’s complete’, he said, ‘you can also ask it to make you a video to watch.’
In the near future…
Sammartino imagines a future, maybe only a year or two from now, where anyone with a great idea – for an app, say – but without the knowledge to build it can just give the task to an AI agent.
Want a tool to make rostering easier? Give it to an agent.
Need a way to communicate more effectively with non-verbal patients? Ask an agent to develop an app that can help.
Can’t convince your employer that you are entitled to the sixth week of annual leave? Feed your EBA to an AI and ask it to write you a summary.
Of course, you still have to check the results, he noted, ‘because AIs can hallucinate! But ultimately what it means is that you can do more and you can spend more time with more patients. That’s what technology is designed to do: to remove the grunt work so that we can spend more time with people.’
