AI in Healthcare Needs More Than Faster Answers

When we arrived at the American Thoracic Society (ATS) conference in Orlando, we did not bring a finished technology. We were bringing a working system, a set of questions, and a belief that the patient experience needs to be easier to capture, organize, and use.

Qualitative Intelligence Systems, known as QIS, is being built to help capture what patients say, notice, and experience between clinical appointments and trial visits. Our goal is to help organize that qualitative information in a way that clinicians, researchers, and patient organizations can bring into care, research, and advocacy conversations.

This matters because clinical data and patient experience often live in separate places.

QIS is different from a general AI chatbot because it is being designed around structured qualitative input, multiple model comparison, and human review. It is being developed for use across patient advocacy, care, and research settings.

Clinical data can show test results, medications, diagnoses, hospitalizations, and measured outcomes. Patient experience can show what daily life looks and feels like, what symptoms are changing, what questions keep coming up, what care instructions are hard to follow, and what support patients need outside of scheduled appointments.

QIS is designed to help bring those two kinds of information closer together.

ATS gave us a chance to see how that idea landed with people across respiratory medicine, including patients, caregivers, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and more.

QIS at ATS

QIS came to ATS with three main opportunities to share our work: a poster at the Respiratory Innovation Summit, a live kiosk in the AI Lab, and a presentation in the AI Lab! Answers Theater.

Each setting gave us a different way to explain what QIS is trying to do.

At the Respiratory Innovation Summit, the QIS poster used a composite patient case built from publicly available trial data. The goal was to show what the clinical record can capture, and what a qualitative patient instrument may add.

That distinction became one of the most important parts of the week.

The clinical record tells part of the patient story. It can show what was measured, prescribed, tested, diagnosed, or documented. But it often cannot show what the patient was trying to manage at home, what they misunderstood, what changed slowly over time, or what they did not know to bring up during a visit.

It also may not show what caregivers notice, including changes in energy, mood, symptoms, routines, or the added strain of managing care from day to day. That is where qualitative data can add value.

It does not replace clinical data, but it helps give it context.

Watching QIS Work in Real Time

The AI Lab at ATS gave people a chance to see QIS work live. Across Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, QIS ran on real questions from people who visited the kiosk.

Marc hosted the kiosk in person, while members of the QIS team joined virtually throughout the conference:

• Tom Tully, Patient Adviser, brought the lived experience of pulmonary fibrosis.
• Usman Fawad, AI Engineer, joined from Karachi, Pakistan to support the technology behind the system.
• Jacob Bulandr, Sr. Data Scientist, joined for data and analytics conversations.

Tim Markwell, Director of Clinical Applications at Springfield Clinic, joined some of the kiosk conversations. A credentialed radiologic technologist who now runs clinical applications at a major healthcare system, Tim brought a perspective grounded in both clinical practice and the systems that support it.

QIS is not being built from one point of view. It needs patient experience, clinical thinking, data structure, and technology working together.

At the kiosk, visitors could watch multiple AI models respond to the same question. They could see where the models agreed, where they differed, and where human review was needed.

QIS includes what we call Human Gate, which is our term for human review that checks whether the AI response makes sense in context. That part is central to the design.

AI can organize information quickly, but it can miss tone, urgency, lived experience, or the real-world meaning behind a question. In healthcare, those details matter. A response can sound right and still miss the point. Human review helps protect against that.

By the end of the conference, people from nearby booths were coming over to ask what QIS was about, see the dashboards, and understand how the system was working. Seeing QIS in action helped people understand the concept more quickly than an explanation alone.

Helping Patients Use AI More Thoughtfully

On Tuesday, QIS gave a 20-minute presentation in the AI Lab! Answers Theater. The topic was How Patients Use AI to Make Sense of What Is Happening to Them.

That talk was not about asking AI to diagnose symptoms or replace medical advice. It focused on practical ways patients and caregivers are already using AI to prepare, organize, understand, and speak up during appointments.

We included examples like turning observations into notes, organizing questions before an appointment, translating medical language into plain language, or tracking changes at home so they can be discussed with a care team.

We know that patients and caregivers are already looking for help making sense of complex information, especially when they are preparing for appointments, processing new information, or trying to explain what has changed at home. They need guidance on how to use these tools safely, with privacy in mind, and without losing the role of clinicians, nurses, and trusted patient organizations.

That is what made the week meaningful. The need was not abstract. People were already holding questions, stories, and information that mattered. What they needed was a better way to organize it, understand it, and bring it into the conversations where decisions are made.

Why PF Warriors Matters to This Work

PF Warriors was also at ATS through the American Thoracic Society Public Advisory Roundtable (PAR). PAR brings respiratory patient organizations into the ATS community, helping connect scientific and medical conversations with the people living with these diseases.

PF Warriors is a global support network that provides education, inspiration, and hope to individuals and families affected by pulmonary fibrosis.

Pulmonary fibrosis has changed significantly in the last decade. There are now three FDA-approved treatments, but there is still no cure. Lung transplant remains available to only a small percentage of patients.

People are managing symptoms at home. They are making choices about oxygen, activity, medication, appointments, family life, travel, work, and uncertainty. Caregivers are noticing changes. Patients are adapting in ways that may never be documented in a clinical record.

That is why pulmonary fibrosis is such an important first disease space for QIS. The community has deep lived experience, active patient leadership, and a clear need for better ways to understand what people carry between visits.

At ATS, PF Warriors also brought that patient voice into conversations with clinicians, researchers, and medical professionals. Their presence helped ground the week in what this work is really about: people living with serious lung disease and the families supporting them.

What ATS Made Possible

ATS created a setting where these conversations could happen in the same place.

The AI Lab allowed QIS to be tested in front of people who think about respiratory care from many different angles. PAR made sure patient organizations were part of the broader ATS environment. PF Warriors brought lived experience and community insight into the room.

QIS is not only a technology platform. It is a way to listen more carefully, organize lived experience more responsibly, and help make patient insight more useful to clinical and research conversations.

It asks:

• What are patients and caregivers noticing that the system may not capture?
• How can those observations be organized without stripping away meaning?
• How can qualitative experience support better clinical and research questions?
• How can AI help without replacing human judgment?

Those questions align with the ATS mission to accelerate the advancement of global respiratory health through multidisciplinary collaboration, education, and advocacy.

What Comes Next

QIS is still being built. PF Warriors continues to support patients and caregivers every day. ATS continues to bring people together around science, care, education, advocacy, and progress in respiratory health.

We are going back to work with a clearer sense of why qualitative information, as well as quantitative data, matters.

If you are working in respiratory medicine, patient advocacy, clinical research, health technology, or patient-centered innovation, we would welcome you to continue this conversation.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult your doctor for medical concerns. AI tools should not replace guidance from your healthcare team.