Improving pediatric care with AI at Valley Children's Hospital

A pediatric hospital expands its use of AI

Valley Children's Hospital, located just outside Fresno in California’s Central Valley, is using artificial intelligence to improve both the patient experience and clinical decision-making for a large, largely rural population. The hospital serves about 1.3 million children across a broad region stretching between Sacramento and Los Angeles, and leaders say AI is becoming an increasingly practical tool for addressing both access and quality of care.

At the center of that effort is Dr. Michael Scahill, the hospital’s medical director of physician informatics and digital health, who described AI not as a futuristic experiment but as a set of working tools already changing how pediatric care is delivered. The focus is not limited to efficiency. Hospital leaders frame the technology as a way to give children in the Central Valley a more personalized and responsive level of care.

Improving visits through ambient documentation

One of the most immediate uses of AI is ambient documentation, which allows software to listen during appointments and assist with medical note-taking in the background. For physicians, that reduces the burden of typing, navigating electronic records, and completing documentation while still trying to maintain eye contact and conversation with patients and families.

That shift matters especially in pediatrics, where trust, attention, and family communication are central to a successful visit. Instead of spending much of an appointment facing a screen, clinicians can stay more focused on the child and caregivers in the room. Hospital leadership says physicians who have tested the technology have responded positively, seeing it as a way to reduce administrative strain while improving bedside interaction.

“I think those kids deserve the same care that kids in Palo Alto get.”

The hospital is also piloting similar tools for nursing documentation, including support for recording routine information such as vital signs. In addition, it is working with Epic on AI-assisted history gathering so families may be able to answer questions conversationally rather than relying only on conventional forms and checkboxes.

Using data to support rare-disease care

Beyond office workflow, AI is also being applied to harder clinical problems, especially in areas where pediatric medicine has traditionally had less data and less commercial investment than adult care. Scahill noted that children account for a relatively small share of hospitalizations in the United States, which means fewer data sets are available to train systems specifically for pediatric use.

That gap is especially important in the treatment of rare diseases, where individual hospitals may see only a small number of cases. To address that, Valley Children’s is using Epic Cosmos, a large-scale data platform built from electronic health record information, to help physicians identify other providers around the country with experience treating uncommon pediatric conditions. Rather than exposing patient identities, the platform helps clinicians find peers who have managed similar cases and can offer insight on complications or treatment approaches.

For a hospital serving a broad Central Valley region, that kind of networked expertise can be especially valuable. It gives local clinicians access to specialized knowledge that might otherwise be concentrated at distant academic centers.

Genomics and medication decisions

Another major area of AI use is genomics-informed medication therapy. Valley Children’s says it is using AI to analyze genomic information so clinicians can better determine which drugs may work best for a child, which medications may pose problems, and what dosage may be most appropriate.

That matters because pediatric prescribing can be highly individualized, and genomic findings can reveal important differences in how patients metabolize or tolerate certain drugs. Hospital leaders said the organization is also building automation around lab results from genomic testing, allowing information to flow more directly into clinical workflows and alert prescribing physicians when adjustments may be needed.

The result is a more personalized treatment model, where technology helps sift through a complex medication landscape and translate genomic data into practical decisions at the point of care.

Why it matters in the Central Valley

The Central Valley context is a major part of why these efforts stand out. Valley Children’s serves communities where physician recruitment can be challenging and where families may not have easy access to the same density of specialists and academic medical centers found in coastal California. In that environment, AI is being positioned as a tool to narrow geographic inequities rather than simply automate paperwork.

For Fresno and the broader Central Valley, that makes the technology story more concrete. The issue is not just innovation for its own sake; it is about whether digital tools can help regional health systems extend specialty-quality care to children who live far from the state’s largest medical hubs.

Broader significance for technology and healthcare

The hospital’s approach reflects a broader shift in health technology: AI is moving from headline-grabbing experiments into specific, operational uses such as documentation, decision support, analytics, and genomic interpretation. In pediatric care, where data shortages and smaller market incentives have slowed adoption, Valley Children’s is presenting a model of how a regional hospital can still put AI to work in meaningful ways.

That makes the development notable not only for healthcare delivery, but also for the technology sector. It shows how AI tools may have their strongest impact when they are tailored to concrete clinical needs—reducing administrative load, expanding access to expertise, and improving precision in treatment decisions—rather than being deployed as general-purpose solutions.

Central Valley AI is produced by the CVAI Newsdesk team and developed by Kaweah Tech, a regional firm that builds, deploys, and integrates AI solutions for businesses across California's Central Valley.

Source

https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/improving-pediatric-care-ai-valley-childrens-hospital