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BY Effie Carlson

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It’s 2 a.m. in the ER, and a physician is asking the hospital’s new AI assistant to summarize a patient’s chart. The cursor spins for minutes while the AI tool waits on the decades-old database underneath to answer, something it was never designed to do.

The electronic health record (EHR) system is too old and was not built to keep up with AI’s demands. It’s like asking a 50-year-old runner to sprint with a 25-year-old; a pulled muscle or torn ligament is coming. Hospitals everywhere are operating this way as they onboard AI tools, not knowing whether their underlying systems can withstand the warp-speed demands of these technologies.

In another industry, a slow or sometimes-crashing system may create headaches for the sales team.…