Implementing health care augmented intelligence (AI) tools will mean change for your health care organization.
And the time to prepare everyone for the change is before the tool is actually rolled out so that patient care and the patient experience are not disrupted. It’s not just the physicians and health professionals using it who need to be prepared for the new tool. Health care organization team members who deal with issues such as IT implementation, marketing and analytics are stakeholders who need to be involved.
Consider an ambient AI scribe that changes the way physicians document when speaking to a patient or predictive models or summarization tools—these tools will change the status quo. Having the processes to provide the appropriate education, teaching physicians how to use the information in tools like these, what their new workflow is going to be, and then having a feedback loop is going to be really important to ensure these tools are working as expected.
“There are going to be unintended consequences, so having a team that is managing that, evaluating it and is able to take feedback and pivot quickly is going to be really important for the success of the implementation,” said Margaret Lozovatsky, MD, chief medical information officer and vice president of digital health innovations at the AMA.
AMA survey research shows that health care AI is playing a rapidly increasing role in everything from clinical duties to administrative activities, so it is important for leaders to put the work in to support AI organization readiness.
The AMA STEPS Forward® “Governance for Augmented Intelligence” toolkit is a comprehensive eight-step guide for health care systems to establish a governance framework to implement, manage and scale AI solutions.
The foundational pillars of responsible AI governance are:
- Establishing executive accountability and structure.
- Forming a working group to detail priorities, processes and policies.
- Assessing current policies.
- Developing AI policies.
- Defining project intake, vendor evaluation and assessment processes.
- Updating standard planning and implementation processes.
- Establishing an oversight and monitoring process.
- Supporting AI organizational readiness.
The AMA defines AI as augmented intelligence to emphasize that AI’s role is to help health care professionals, not replace them.
From AI implementation to EHR adoption and usability, the AMA is fighting to make technology work for physicians, ensuring that it is an asset to doctors.
Who needs to be ready to help?
To give new health AI initiatives the support they need to be successful, stakeholders across the health system need to be involved with the buildup phase of a new tool’s launch so that they can make practical adjustments to the way things currently work. Typically, an AI working group initiates and oversees this part of the process and the health system’s AI governance group provides longer-term oversight.
Here is a sampling from the toolkit of areas that different parts of the organization should prepare for:
- Clinical informatics: Monitoring and evaluating an AI tool’s impact on key clinical priorities.
- Data science and analytics: Monitoring AI tool outputs for accuracy and equitable use.
- Department leads: Monitoring clinician AI use and adjusting tool features, workflows and/or clinical training where needed.
- Health information management: Ensuring the integrity, security and privacy of health data in AI tools.
- Communications and public relations: Readying the organization to address the public’s questions and concerns related to AI in use.
- Marketing: Ensuring patient communications, such as welcome packets, consents and digital platforms, are updated where needed to describe how the health system uses AI.
- Legal: Reviewing legal contracts with AI vendors.
- Human resources/education and training: Updating training so that it includes applicable AI material and making sure that all teams members receive AI training.
Find out how participants in the AMA Health System Member Program are using AI to make meaningful change. That includes the Permanente Medical Group, as explored in a recent episode of the “AMA STEPS Forward Podcast.”
In addition to fighting on the legislative front to help ensure that technology is an asset to physicians, the AMA has adopted policy (PDF) that addresses the development, deployment and use of health care AI, with particular emphasis on:
- Health care AI oversight.
- When and what to disclose to advance AI transparency.
- Generative AI policies and governance.
- Physician liability for use of AI-enabled technologies.
- AI data privacy and cybersecurity.
- Payer use of AI and automated decision-making systems.
Explore the emerging landscape of health care AI. Also, find out how to apply AI to transform health care with the “AMA ChangeMedEd® Artificial Intelligence in Health Care Series.”
