As augmented intelligence (AI)—commonly called artificial intelligence—tools are growing more powerful, it’s important to take advantage of the innovation that they offer. However, health care leaders should not forget what is at the heart of medicine: providing patients with the best care and possible outcomes.
“Augmented intelligence places people, patients, clinicians and communities, rather than algorithms, at its center,” Vincent Liu, MD, chief data officer at The Permanente Medical Group, said during an episode of the “AMA STEPS Forward® Podcast.”
“Instead of thinking about AI as just a hammer looking for a nail, it's really thinking about how this technology—whether it's a more simplistic form, whether it's classical or traditional AI, all the way out to generative AI—can help our doctors do their work more efficiently, more effectively and more safely,” Dr. Liu said in the podcast recorded with Margaret Lozovatsky, MD. She is the AMA’s chief medical information officer and vice president of digital health innovations.
On the podcast, the two physician experts explored how The Permanente Medical Group navigates AI governance. Dr. Liu discussed how he and his colleagues are aligning health AI initiatives with strategic goals, scaling successful pilots such as ambient AI documentation, managing emerging risks and building trust through physician and patient engagement.
The Permanente Medical Group is part of the AMA Health System Member Program, which provides enterprise solutions to equip leadership, physicians and care teams with resources to help drive the future of medicine.
Think about risks, liabilities
With nearly two-third of physicians reporting that they used AI tools in 2024, nearly double the number who used it the prior year, according to an AMA survey (PDF), health care organizations should address challenges such as data privacy, algorithm bias and liability that is inherent of the use of new AI tools.
At The Permanente Medical Group, health care leaders follow the same policies and procedures that they follow for all of their patient data. They provide the maximum security to ensure patient data is protected and remains private.
Algorithmic bias is another area that clinics need to address to mitigate downstream unintended consequences.
“We take our algorithms through metrics of fairness, for example, for predictive models, and look at these different metrics to understand what is the potential to reweight the algorithm to minimize any differences in the groups, or should we change the practice … at the implementation layer, at the human layer, in order to work on mitigating those risks,” Dr. Liu said.
The Permanente Medical Group also reinforces with physicians that they are still the final decision-makers.
“These predictive models or these tools are not omniscient—they will make errors,” Dr. Liu said. “What we need to arm our clinicians with is the expertise to assist the validity of that output and then to edit the outputs and take control over the process. [They should] still stay in the driver’s seat in terms of their expertise in clinical decision-making.”
Engage patients
As a health care organization’s AI initiatives move ahead, Dr. Liu said it is important to make patients and communities partners in the process.
“Not far in the future, patients will be seeking health systems and doctors who are using AI because they would rather see that layer of support to ensure that their physicians and health systems are equipped, rather than fearing the technology,” Dr. Liu said. “But we do need to communicate and educate to make sure that they understand exactly how it's being used.”
Catch up on AI with the AMA
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.
That includes work on the AMA STEPS Forward toolkit, “Governance for Augmented Intelligence,” which was developed in collaboration with Manatt Health and is a comprehensive eight-step guide for health care systems to establish a governance framework to implement, manage and scale AI solutions.
Find out how participants in the AMA Health System Member Program are using AI to make meaningful change.
Also, learn more with the AMA about the emerging landscape of health care AI. And find out how to apply AI to transform health care with the “AMA ChangeMedEd® Artificial Intelligence in Health Care Series.”
