Ellen Gelles, MD

Counting down the most impactful news at major medical meetings, it’s the HCPLive Five! This episode focuses on 5 key internal medicine updates from the 2025 American College of Physicians (ACP) IM meeting.

HCPLive Five - Internal Medicine Updates at ACP 2025

Thousands of internal medicine specialists gathered in New Orleans for the 

2025 American College of Physicians (ACP) Internal Medicine Meeting

 to share clinical insights, examine emerging data, and attend hundreds of sessions.

 on-site coverage, the Internal Medicine Team conducted expert interviews and reported on timely topics across hospital medicine, artificial intelligence, health policy, and more. In this edition of the HCPLive Five, the team highlights key conversations on opioid-sparing regimens in hospitalized patients, the clinical risks and benefits of AI tools, bias mitigation in AI modeling, AI's diagnostic performance in urgent care, and the ACP’s call to action on national health policy issues.

Validating Opioid-Sparing Pain Management Regimens, with Angel Goenawan, MD

Angel Goenawan, MD, a hospitalist at Bayhealth in Delaware, discussed a meta-analysis of eight randomized clinical trials comparing opioid-sparing regimens to traditional opioid-based pain management in hospitalized patients. 

The analysis showed that patients on non-opioid regimens had better pain control and used significantly lower total doses of opioids across both surgical and nonsurgical groups.

Balancing Benefits and Risks of AI Mitigation of Clinician Burden, with Ellen Gelles, MD

Ellen Gelles, MD, from the American College of Physicians, discussed how AI tools can reduce clinician workload by handling tasks like ambient documentation and message triage. 

She noted pilot studies showing improved efficiency but emphasized the need for data transparency and monitoring to avoid unintended consequences like bias or safety lapses.

Reducing Racial Bias in AI Models, with Nawsabah Noor, MBBS

Nawsabah Noor, MBBS, presented on an AI-driven tool that modifies image saturation to improve dermatologic diagnosis accuracy in patients with darker skin tones. 

Early results suggest that this intervention enhances visual clarity of skin conditions and could reduce diagnostic disparities across racial groups.

AI Bests Clinicians in Urgent Care Treatment Recommendations, with Zehavi Kugler, MD, and Ran Shaul

Zehavi Kugler, MD, and Ran Shaul discussed a study showing that AI-generated recommendations for virtual urgent care visits were rated as optimal 72% of the time, compared to 61% for clinician recommendations. 

The AI system also produced fewer suboptimal recommendations, suggesting a role for decision support tools in improving care quality.

ACP Urges Concern for Health Policy Issues, with Shari Erickson, MPH

Shari Erickson, MPH, from the American College of Physicians, highlighted key health policy threats including prior authorization burdens, data privacy concerns, and clinician burnout. 

She referenced ACP survey data indicating high levels of frustration among internists and warned of potential legal action to protect access to evidence-based care.

Kugler and Shaul's disclosures include K Health. Goenawan, Gelles, Noor, and Erickson had no relevant disclosures to report.

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Counting down the most impactful news at major medical meetings, it’s the HCPLive Five! This episode focuses on 5 key internal medicine updates from the 2025 American College of Physicians (ACP) IM meeting.



Gelles discussed potential concerns with AI’s use in reducing administrative burden but stressed its promise.

As AI tools become more integrated into clinical workflows, their promise to reduce administrative burden is clear, as well as their risks. Technologies like ambient documentation and AI-powered chart review can save time and improve efficiency, but they also raise concerns about accuracy, omission, bias, and data privacy. Clinicians must navigate a fast-moving landscape where errors may go unnoticed, cognitive engagement may be reduced, and automation bias could creep into decision-making. While the technology continues to improve rapidly, careful oversight, critical thinking, and transparent safeguards are essential to ensure that AI enhances and not compromises clinical care.

Ellen Gelles, MD, Internal Medicine Physician and Clinical Informaticist at the MetroHealth System and associate professor at Case Western Reserve University, along with Stephen Ma, MD, and Deepti Pandita, MD, participated in a panel at the 

American College of Physicians (ACP) Internal Medicine (IM) Meeting 2025

, held April 3-5, in New Orleans, Louisiana, that focused on how these AI tools can help reduce clinician burden.

“I hope this will encourage more people to go into primary care, because one of the things that my residents always say is that they're worried about the burden of, for example, in basket and documenting… I also just caution [clinicians] to be really vigilant about making sure these tools are accurate and that you're having these checks,” Gelles said.

 sat down with Gelles during the meeting to learn more about some of these new and upcoming AI tools and also the risks and concerns that may come with using them, including training on biased data, ensuring accuracy, and data security. She ended by sharing her excitement for the tools and hoping that the ease of administrative burden may encourage more clinicians to go into internal medicine.

Gelles E, MA S, Pandita D. How AI Can Reduce Clinician Burden. Presented at: ACP IM Meeting 2025; April 3-5; New Orleans, Louisiana.

Gelles discussed AI tools that are becoming a part of clinician’s armamentariums and the impact they are having on the field.

Enhancing Clinical Efficiency with AI to Prioritize Patient Care, with Ellen Gelles, MD

Physician burnout remains a persistent threat to workforce sustainability and patient care—fueled in large part by administrative burden, particularly electronic health record (EHR) documentation. Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a promising solution, offering tools that can reduce time spent on clinical notes, streamline patient communication, and summarize complex charts.

“[AI] is going to be one of those super exciting new tools that will help our patients. It's kind of like the GLP1 agonists of health information technologies. It's going to be one of those life changing things - like we finally have a drug to have drugs that help obesity, and we finally have solutions that help physician burden… I can think of just a few things along my road map of practice where that's been the case, and I think this is going to be one of them,” Gelles told 

sat down with Gelles during the meeting to learn more about some of these helpful AI applications and how they are transforming the field. She outlined some applications that clinicians are beginning to use, including ambient listening, automated message triage, and AI-generated draft responses, that are alleviating the pressure that once kept clinicians tethered to screens instead of patients. She also shared her excitement and positive outlook for AI’s continued use in assisting clincians.

Ellen Gelles, MD

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