ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — On the Cardiac Medical Unit at BayCare's St. Anthony's Hospital, nurse Ryorayne Ruby Gonzales is constantly gathering patient information.

What You Need To Know

  • Nurses at St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg have been using artificial intelligence for over a month to help streamline and increase one-on-one patient care. It is a pilot program

  • BayCare says the project aims to transform how nurses document clinical assessments and find important patient information

  • The program is Aiva Health’s Nurse Assistant

  • BayCare has already begun using AI-assisted software for physicians in their offices

Patient information is vital and used by doctors, other nurses and many more medical staff to get patients healthy.

The problem is, it takes time to gather and document that information.

Or at least, it did.

“So, how much water did you drink today?” Gonzales asks her patient, John.

After his reply, she puts her phone to her mouth and relays the information he gave her into an artificial intelligence application called Aiva.

“It’s spending less time with a computer and more on our patient care,” said Gonzales. “So that’s the most important thing for us nurses, because we don’t have a time to talk to our patients. Most of the time we are in the computer just reading through the computers. But with Ava, it helps us a lot.”

This is a pilot program at St. Anthony’s, but already the nurse manager on the floor said the nurses utilizing the program love it.

“It’s been going really, really good,” said Liza Redmond, Nurse Manager at Baycare’s St. Anthony’s Hospital. “The team is super excited about the whole thing. It gives them a lot more time with face to face with their patients and less away, you know, behind a computer screen.”

From a big picture perspective, that is a game changer. Even so, BayCare leaders say they will make sure it fits within its health care mission.

“I think from a health care perspective, we have to really evaluate each use case and see where it makes sense for AI to be introduced to support the clinicians and their decision making and the patient care that they’re providing to our patients,” said Nicole Gitney, BayCare’s Vice President of Nursing Infomatics.

Right now, the AI is checking that box.

Gonzales said she was also impressed when the AI also understood her accent. She is of Filipino descent and English is her second language.

“We were hesitant (she and other nurses) because we have accents, and we thought that Aiva will not understand us, especially when we say words that we keep on repeating and then, Aiva gets it,“ she said, smiling.

The pilot program began in December 2024.