Cardiologist and clinical informaticist Ashley Beecy, MD, gets a lot questions these days about integrating augmented intelligence (AI)—commonly called artificial intelligence—into health care. As the chief AI officer at Sutter Health, in Northern California, she leads the strategic advancement of AI across her health system.
But there’s one question in particular she gets from women physicians: Is it too late for me to get involved?
“No, it's not too late!” Dr. Beecy tells them. “This technology is evolving so rapidly … just jump on the train.”
A webinar hosted by the AMA Women Physicians Section (AMA-WPS) in September featured a question-and-answer session with Dr. Beecy about how women physicians can get more involved in health care AI development.
As chief AI officer at Sutter Health, one of Dr. Beecy’s responsibilities is to ensure the thoughtful and safe application of AI through governance best practices. Sutter Health is a member of the AMA Health System Program, which provides enterprise solutions to equip leadership, physicians and care teams with resources to help drive the future of medicine.
Buffering her claim that it’s never too late to get involved, she noted that she hasn’t always worked in health care AI.
Dr. Beecy started her career in computer engineering after studying premed in college. She first worked for about 10 years at IBM and Citibank in software development and product management.
“Ultimately, it's the application of technology to improve patients' health, their health care journey” that brought her back to medicine, she said.
The AMA-WPS celebrates women physicians, residents and medical students every September during Women in Medicine Month, which also includes the section’s Inspiration Award to honor physicians who have helped advance the careers of women in medicine.
The AMA Women Physicians Section consists of more than 100,000 members of the AMA and aims to increase the number and influence of women physicians in leadership roles and to advocate for and advance the understanding of women's health issues.
How—and why—tech and medicine agree
“There's a lot of similarities between the way we think about developing a technical solution and the way we think about solving a clinical problem,” Dr. Beecy said. “You start with the hypothesis generation. You do some testing. You have an evaluation plan. And then you monitor it.”
The advantage that physicians enjoy in evaluating health care AI is having medical backgrounds, having had face-to-face interactions with patients, she noted.
“You know what that encounter feels like, so when you're inserting a technology—maybe something like an ambient scribe—into that relationship, you can anticipate maybe what the patient's reaction or perception of that will be, what the clinician's reaction to that will be, how it will integrate into their workflow,” she said.
Physicians care most about how a solution performs, she noted. They naturally scrutinize “how that technology fits into what we're doing to achieve the broader outcome, whether that’s reducing admissions or mortality or whatever we're trying to achieve.”
Along these lines, the AMA launched its Center for Digital Health and AI in October. The AMA center will address four key areas that are pivotal to the long-term success of these technologies:
- Policy and regulatory leadership—working with regulators, policymakers and technology leaders to shape benchmarks for safe and effective use of AI in medicine and digital health tools.
- Clinical workflow integration—creating opportunities for physicians to shape AI and digital tools so they work within clinical workflows and enhance patient and clinician experience.
- Education and training—equipping physicians and health systems with knowledge and tools to integrate AI efficiently and effectively into practice.
- Collaboration—building partnerships across the tech, research, government and health care sectors to drive innovation aligned with patient needs.
From AI implementation to digital health adoption and EHR usability, the AMA is fighting to make technology work for physicians, ensuring that it is an asset to doctors.
Quick ways to get involved
Women physicians looking to understand the basics of health care AI don’t need expensive formal training right off the bat, Dr. Beecy noted. For example, physicians can find out how to apply AI to transform health care with the “AMA ChangeMedEd® Artificial Intelligence in Health Care Series.”
“You can understand what some of the limitations are, because they’re just as important as understanding some of the benefits,” she said.
Reading up on health care AI research is another.
“There's a lot of work happening to generate evidence that these tools can have the impact we think they do. So having an understanding of clinical trials is one way you could get involved,” she said. “We need to measure the safety and efficacy of what we're doing.”
Also, don’t assume you need to look outside your organization for opportunities.
“It's really about being proactive,” Dr. Beecy said. “You want to be an impact player, no matter what your gender is. So, when there's something that needs to be done for your medicine residency, for your division, be an impact player.”
More to the point: Don’t wait to be given a leadership position.
“That's oftentimes a misconception,” she said. “Be the leader before you have the title. Go for it. Be that impact player, take on that project, and take it on to completion. Those successes—they may feel small to start, but they build on each other, and then you'll build a reputation of being that impact player, and people will give you the title. They'll give you that leadership role.”
Learn more about the AMA Women Physicians Section, which seeks to influence and contribute to AMA policy and program development on issues of importance to women physicians, as well as to increase the number and influence of women physicians in leadership roles.
