Dr. Chang on maintaining health care access through AI innovation

Facing care gaps for marginalized communities and a projected physician shortage, the future of telemedicine will depend more and more on AI and other health care innovations. Speaking at a 2025 ViVE panel on virtual care, Nolan Chang, MD, executive vice president of Strategy, Corporate Development and Finance for The Permanente Federation, discussed how Kaiser Permanente’s integrated, value-based care model is ideal for maintaining access to high-quality care. 

“We have the opportunity to look at the entire care delivery system, develop solutions and systems to make it easy to do the right thing that drives better outcomes,” said Dr. Chang. 

The benefits of an integrated care model extend into how technology is implemented. Dr. Chang noted that Kaiser Permanents gathers perspectives on responsible AI usage from experienced IT leaders as well as doctors, nurses, and patient advocates. 

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This integrated approach helps create a better experience for both patients and physicians. Dr. Chang explained how the recent national rollout of an ambient listening AI tool that transcribes patient office visits is helping physicians at Kaiser Permanente build meaningful connections with patients while reducing the burden of documentation, which is a leading source of burnout. 

The ambient AI application records patient visits and supplies physicians with a summary they can review and correct, saving them hours of administrative time. The tool also allows physicians to speak to patients without a screen in the way, creating a better patient experience, added Dr. Chang. 

“While we need to make sure that it’s validated, we have been seeing that it’s been saving a tremendous amount of time, allowing the physicians to focus on our patients,” said Dr. Chang.  

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Dr. Chang added that a valuable potential benefit of future AI applications is the ability to help understand patients more, which can assist with breaking access barriers and help close care disparity gaps. 

“[AI at Kaiser Permanente is] always going to [put] the patient at the center,” said Dr. Chang. “Hopefully technology will help us bridge that gap of moving health care into our patients’ lives, not making our patients’ lives shift into our world.” 

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