Big tech firm Microsoft joined a group of 16 health systems on Monday to launch a stakeholder group that's focused on implementing artificial intelligence 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.
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Microsoft said the group would share best practices, create a process where providers can register for the usage of AI in clinical settings and offer tools to enable measurement of outcomes associated with the technology. The initial participants are existing customers of Microsoft’s cloud platform Azure.
“It's very difficult to improve something, or assess something, if you don't measure it,” said Dr. David Rhew, global chief medical officer and vice president for healthcare at Microsoft.
Rhew said the network aims create streamlined and uniformed data standards and a data sharing platform that will assist Azure customers in the creation, training and deployment of new AI models while optimizing existing large language models.
“When you de-identify data, sometimes you lose valuable information that could be important for the particular consideration, such as social determinants, ZIP Code, ethnicity, [or] things like that,” Rhew said. “We want to create as many options as possible for organizations to be able to collaborate and feel comfortable.”
Rhew said the group seeks to complement existing stakeholder AI groups like the Coalition for Health AI, which announced new leadership on March 1.
Microsoft said it would also partner on the network with nonprofit community health data network OCHIN and revenue cycle management company TruBridge. Rhew said the group will add new members in the future.
The technology giant announced the creation of the group in a news release tied to the opening of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s annual conference in Orlando, Florida.
