AI is becoming an essential part of the healthcare workplace, from ambient scribing tools to clinical decision support. But healthcare workers are still learning best practices when it comes to leveraging AI.
During a Thursday panel discussion at the MedCity INVEST Digital Health conference in Dallas, three healthcare executives shared what’s top of mind for them when rolling out AI products in the workplace. The session was moderated by Keith J. Figlioli, managing partner at LRVHealth.
For one executive, getting AI tools adopted is key. But in order for these tools to be adopted, workers have to trust them, according to Dr. Steve Miff, president and CEO of Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation. To build trust, there needs to be robust evaluation frameworks for AI. These tools also “cannot be a black box,” so providing “insights and additional real-time information behind those outputs and algorithms is critical,” he said. In addition, it’s essential to automate the monitoring of AI models.
“Once you open up the gate, you’re going to end up with dozens of different AI models, and the question I’m asking is, ‘How am I going to keep up with monitoring this consistently as an organization?’ So we’ve been focusing on developing algorithms and methods to actually be able to monitor the performance of these models in real time, … and that actually builds trust with the team, knowing that somebody or a group is continuously looking at those and alerting if something goes off track,” he said.
He added that among frontline staff, there is still a concern that AI will cause them to lose their jobs, so there is often a “resistence” when new tools are introduced.
Another healthcare executive — Jess Botros, vice president of IT strategy and operations at Ardent Health — noted that she wants the system’s clinicians to be able to spend as much time as possible with patients and have the right tools in hand. That said, there’s a lot of responsibility when it comes to deploying AI.
“In order to do this in the right way, you have to have your house in order from a data perspective, from a trust perspective,” she said. “You think about change management impacts and making sure that people are really along for the ride and really understand why we’re doing what we’re trying to do. It becomes super important.”
Abhinav Shashank, CEO and co-founder of Innovaccer, meanwhile, stressed the importance of interoperability. The healthcare industry should be working on connecting existing systems versus building new systems. He emphasized that many of healthcare’s biggest challenges, such as claims processing and transitioning to value-based care, stem from broken information flows.
“Great software is going to get built all across the U.S., and what we need to work on is to create a system that connects these things and makes them really work together well. … I just think [that] if we got these things to work together, we would be in so much of a better place than basically trying to get 20 new things,” he said.
