Health care
BY ARIEL WORTHY
Health Care Edition
2026
Readers, welcome to Community Impact’s annual Health Care Edition. This annual guide explores the many factors shaping the health care landscape across Houston’s Inner Loop communities. In this edition, readers will nd coverage examining how local hospitals, health care providers and community organizers are responding to the evolving needs of residents.
Gold Sponsors
Cassandra Jenkins Editor cjenkins@ communityimpact.com
Houston Methodist Hospital houstonmethodist.org 713.790.3333 At Houston Methodist, we are
Harris Health harrishealth.org 713.526.4243 Our country’s leading safety net healthcare provider, delivering high quality and compassionate care to everyone in our community.
What's inside
committed to connecting patients with advanced, personalized and innovative care. That is our promise of leading medicine.
Read six recent updates from local hospitals (Page 7)
Learn more about this nonpro t (Page 11)
Silver Sponsor
For relevant news and daily updates, subscribe to our free email newsletter!
Use of AI in health care rising in Houston
How AI is being used As for Baylor at St. Luke’s Medical Center, Scott Packard, a spokesperson at its parent company CommonSpirit, said AI is already being deployed in many ways, including: Using AI to spot strokes faster to help doctors save over 80 minutes in treatment time
“This is not ChatGPT for surgeons,” Davis said. “This is about allowing the physician to make the best possible clinical choices at the point of care.” Dr. Gustavo Oderich is the chief of vascular surgery and endovascular therapy at Baylor College of Medicine and the director of its aortic center. He said trying to do complex surgeries with regular imaging systems can be di cult because the imaging is not as clear, which could make the procedures go longer. “Ultimately, it results in bad outcomes,” Oderich said. “At the end of the day, by having sophisti- cated systems like this one, we can do things at a very high level, performance and quality.” For GE HealthCare, Davis said they will continue to look at AI as an opportunity to make complex tasks simpler and more routine. “Our approach is purpose-built, responsible, clinically relevant and designed to make clinicians the most e ective...” she said.
Arti cial intelligence in health care may sound futuristic, but doctors at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center are already using it behind the scenes to help improve performance during minimally invasive surgeries. How it works GE HealthCare’s Allia Moveo acts as a high-tech imaging machine that doctors use during surgery, which helps them see blood vessels and other structures more clearly, according to a news release from GE HealthCare. The machine uses AI to help improve image quality by reducing visual distortions caused by things such as breathing or blood ow. Those improvements use AI, not as a replace- ment for doctors, but as practical technology to help them work more con dently and e ciently, said Kat Davis, vice president and general manager for GE HealthCare’s interventional solutions business.
Monitoring patient data for early signs of critical conditions
Using AI to better detect cancer, including improving breast cancer detection by nearly 30% Creating 3D models of patients’ hearts to determine treatment
SOURCES: BAYLOR AT ST. LUKE’S MEDICAL CENTER, COMMONSPIRIT COMMUNITY IMPACT
Something to note AI still has governance that is ruled by a commit- tee, said spokesperson Scott Packard. The com- mittee regulates AI use to ensure there is always a clinician between AI and the patient, and that it never makes decisions without clinician approval.
6
COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM
Powered by FlippingBook