Duke Health CHIO Eric Poon says healthcare leaders can move quickly and refuse quickly, but they had better learn from those mistakes and adjust appropriately
is investing in about 80 AI products. And they’re good with the reality that not all of these devices are going to work.
” We know that not all that we put our hands on or that comes our way is going to dish out”, says , the heath system’s Chief Health Information Officer. ” We don’t ask for a mountain of evidence up top. Our leadership philosophy is that we need to fail often and fail fast, but we provide just-in-time tips”.
Welcome to what some have called the Wild, Wild West of AI in healthcare. It’s a heady time to be an development executive these time, working with a technology that has strong potential to transform a worried business. But Poon, like so many of his colleagues in health systems and institutions across the country, knows the path ahead has to be managed just right. Mistakes are Sure, but they had better remain learning lessons.
” We boldly tell our practitioners that AI is not perfect and AI is capable of making mistakes, but we as professionals need to be responsible for everything that we take advantage of out of these materials”, he says. ” In this case everything that we put in the table, we need to get immediate responsibility for, which means that we need to take very good care in reviewing the information”.
One instance is external AI, in which Duke Health has partnered with Abridge to build a device for physicians to get the doctor-patient experience. More than 160 specialists in the health system are using the device.
Poon says practitioners have been using voice-to-text technology for some time, so the idea of capturing the doctor-patient chat isn’t totally new. But with AI layered onto the approach, the records have more context and are more easily integrated into the medical history, potentially reducing the time spent by the doctor translating notes while enhancing opportunities to discover care pathways and programming.
Professionals were given some training on how to use the technology, Poon says, but they were also given some freedom to combine the application into their own processes.
As they become comfortable with the systems, Duke Health will look at how it can be integrated into various medical processes. Poon says this will include “workflows upstream and downstream from the creation of the note”.
Here lies the real benefit of working with AI. Accessing and analyzing more information gives practitioners the opportunity to better maintain the patient’s treatment journey—before, during and after the patient-doctor experience. And while this data you uncover those opportunities to improve clinical care, professionals have to be cautious that the information being used is accurate and reliable.
The key to keeping track of the successes—and failures—is management. Poon says AI leadership was launched primarily as a separate object to technology governance, therefore immediately integrated when it became apparent both were looking for the same things.
” We’ve figured out that you cannot have one single group squirreled away trying to perfect data”, he says. ” It needs to be a team sport, so we have a distributed data management process and I think we in some ways take a risk-based strategy”.
Duke Health’s method isn’t special. While some medical companies separate their AI management, more health techniques and clinics are working those obligations into existing committees and workflows. Some just don’t have the time or resources to produce more layers of leadership, while others are recognizing that AI technologies is rapidly becoming a part of some workflows.
Poon says medical professionals need to know that AI is advancing faster than many other systems in care, in part because the technology is easy to use and is being embraced just as fast by consumers. The temptation for healthcare leaders is to move that quickly as well, which is why governance is so important.
” We’ve put a lot of time and effort” into responsible AI development, he says.
is the associate content manager and senior editor for Innovation at HealthLeaders.