More than 450 artificial intelligence initiatives are currently being explored across NSW Health as the system looks to use data and emerging technologies to respond to rising demand and an ageing population, according to eHealth NSW chief executive Richard Taggart.

Speaking at Australian Healthcare Week, Mr Taggart said growing numbers of older patients required more complex care and longer hospital stays.

At the same time, expectations around digital access to healthcare had shifted rapidly, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated new models such as virtual care.

Mr Taggart said the pandemic demonstrated how technology, human-centred design and strong clinical collaboration could deliver “world-class experiences”, setting new expectations for the healthcare customer experience.

Health systems must now adapt to a new environment where consumers increasingly expect digital services similar to those provided in other industries.

“We’re seeing consumers move from Googling their conditions to interacting with chatbots,” Mr Taggart said.

AI projects

“There are over 450 AI projects in flight right now across New South Wales Health. We’ve got lots of clinician researchers, we’ve got industry partners, academic partners all doing really amazing stuff and that’s probably the tip of the iceberg for what we know is coming,” he said.

“And so what we’ve been looking at in New South Wales Health is how do we help inform the whole community about how to use AI safely and effectively?”

“What are the governance steps that we need to put in place, where should we focus our investment and our effort?”

Mr Taggart said healthcare is moving beyond earlier phases of e-health and digital health toward what he described as “digitally enabled care”, where technology underpins new clinical workflows and care models.

“We’re not just putting in an EMR anymore or connecting systems,” Mr Taggart said. “We’re not just connecting the systems anymore, we’re asking really thoughtful questions.

“Can we look to see if there are some signals in the data that can tell us, is this patient potentially going to be suffering from sepsis and could we intervene earlier? Can we get some signals from the data that says, this is a consumer that’s at higher risk. You need to think differently, you need to put a different model of care around them.”

Consumer expectations

He said consumer expectations were shifting rapidly as people became accustomed to digital services in other industries.

“People expect information when they want it, how they want it, often on their smartphone,” he said. “They want to be able to use chatbots, they want to use scribes, and they want that capability yesterday. The same expectation also exists for how we consume care and how we provide care. So these expectations are a challenge to manage,” he said.

Mr Taggart  said, “We are now in an era of digitally enabled care, where technology is being used to redefine the models of care that we deliver.

“I think that’s a paradigm shift – a digitally enabled model of care and it means that this ecosystem of people that are investing in digital health, or becoming experts in it, or building products, you have a really important leadership role to play and an important clinical governance role to play.”

Across NSW Health, AI is being explored in a wide range of use cases, including identifying early warning signals in clinical data, supporting clinicians with policy and literature searches, automating administrative tasks such as discharge summaries, and improving diagnostic decision support.

One area attracting significant attention is medical imaging, where AI tools are being trialled to prioritise scans based on urgency.

Mr Taggart said early clinical studies suggest AI-based prioritisation could significantly improve turnaround times for urgent cases.

Mr Taggart outlined a potential future scenario where AI analysis of diagnostic scans could identify normal results and allow some patients to be discharged sooner, supported by virtual follow-up care rather than remaining in hospital while waiting for a formal report.

“These are the kinds of opportunities AI brings that could redefine the journey for consumers and help make the health system more effective,” he said.

Stronger governance

However, Mr Taggart said scaling AI across healthcare will require stronger governance frameworks and a greater focus on evidence.

He highlighted the recently released NSW Health AI Framework as a key step toward guiding safe and responsible use of the technology.

Mr Taggart also called for greater investment in workforce capability, research and emerging digital health companies.

“We need more high-quality evidence showing where AI delivers meaningful clinical outcomes.”

Australia has an opportunity to lead in building that evidence base, he said.