At one of health technology’s biggest events, the conversation around artificial intelligence has changed.
On Monday at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s annual conference in Orlando, Florida, healthcare AI leaders said the conversation around providers’ use of the technology has evolved. There is more of a push towards regulation and guardrails.
Read more: What to expect from HIMSS24
Dr. John Halamka, president of Mayo Clinic Platform, which is the Rochester, Minnesota-based health system's big data initiative, has seen a heightened interest in ensuring AI in healthcare is credible.
“What's exciting is the amount of energy in government, academia and industry around doing this is extremely high,” Halamka said. “It's a 2024 problem. So, at HIMSS this year, are you seeing data cards, model cards and national registry? No. Is there common agreement that we need one? And is it being worked on? Yes.”
On March 1, Halamka was named the chair at the Coalition for Health AI, an industry group that seeks to harmonize standards and reporting for health AI. Halamka said the coalition aims to create a common testing and evolution framework that all stakeholders can use to report results.
It won’t be the only industry group focused on this task. At HIMSS on Monday, big tech firm Microsoft joined a group of 16 health systems to launch a stakeholder group that's focused on implementing AI guardrails.
Microsoft is calling the consortium the Trustworthy & Responsible AI Safety Network (TRAIN); initial participants include Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine, Boston-based Mass General Brigham, Columbia, Maryland-based MedStar Health and Charlotte, North Carolina-based Advocate Health. Rhew said the organizations can work together.
“That’s really the objective of the Trustworthy and Responsible AI Network—to be able to figure out what are the guardrails that need to be put into workflows that will allow us to be able to operationalize responsible AI principles, specifically, the CHAI principles,” Rhew said.
The shifting industry mentality represents a maturity not present during last year’s conference, which occurred only a few months after OpenAI’s large language generative AI model ChatGPT was made available.
Aashima Gupta, global director for healthcare strategy and solutions at Google Cloud and co-chair of a CHAI advisory board, said Google has been working on healthcare AI for more than a decade. She agreed the conversation this year already feels different.
“I believe this is the right moment and not just about moving fast,” Gupta said. “Where we are moving fast is ensuring the technology has the right guardrails.”
Robert Garrett, CEO at New Jersey-based Hackensack Meridian Health, will give a keynote address on AI and the patient experience on Tuesday at HIMSS24. He will be speaking with Matt Renner, president of North America and global startups at Google Cloud.
