Monday, at the HIMSS 2024 Global Health Conference, a new consortium of healthcare leaders announced the creation of the Trustworthy & Responsible AI Network (TRAIN), which aims to operationalize responsible AI principles to improve the quality, safety and trustworthiness of AI in health. Members of the network include AdventHealth, Advocate Health, Boston Children’s Hospital, Cleveland Clinic, Duke Health, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Mass General Brigham, MedStar Health, Mercy, Mount Sinai Health System, Northwestern Medicine, Providence, Sharp HealthCare, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and Microsoft as the technology enabling partner. Additionally, the network is collaborating with OCHIN, which serves a national network of community health organizations with solutions, expertise, clinical insights and tailored technologies, and TruBridge, a partner and conduit to community healthcare, to help ensure that every organization, regardless of resources, has access to TRAIN’s benefits.
New AI capabilities have the potential to transform the healthcare industry by enabling better care outcomes, improving efficiency and productivity, and reducing costs. From helping screen patients, to developing new treatments and drugs, to automating administrative tasks and enhancing public health, AI is creating new possibilities and opportunities for healthcare organizations and practitioners. As new uses of AI in healthcare continue to unfold and grow, the need for rigorous development and evaluation standards becomes even more important to ensure effective and responsible applications of AI.
Through collaboration, TRAIN members will help improve the quality and trustworthiness of AI by:
- Sharing best practices related to the use of AI in healthcare settings, including the safety, reliability and monitoring of AI algorithms, and the skillsets required to manage AI responsibly. Data and AI algorithms will not be shared between member organizations or with third parties.
- Enabling registration of AI used for clinical care or clinical operations through a secure online portal.
- Providing tools to enable measurement of outcomes associated with the implementation of AI, including best practices for studying the efficacy and value of AI methods in healthcare settings and leveraging of privacy-preserving environments, with considerations in both pre- and post-deployment settings. Tools that allow analyses to be performed in subpopulations to assess bias will also be provided.
- Facilitating the development of a federated national AI outcomes registry for organizations to share among themselves. The registry will capture real-world outcomes related to efficacy, safety and optimization of AI algorithms.
For more information on the collaboration and to hear from founding members, join the session at HIMSS on Tuesday, March 12, 2024, from 3 to 4 p.m. ET, “Operationalizing Responsible AI in Healthcare: Challenges and Opportunities.”
What they are saying:
Duke Health
“I am excited to partner with my colleagues from our diverse group of health systems and Microsoft in the development and implementation of technologies and capabilities that make health AI more trustworthy,” said Dr. Michael Pencina, chief data scientist for Duke Health and co-founder and board member for Coalition for Health AI (CHAI). “We look forward to leveraging the Coalition for Health AI’s (CHAI) best practice guidelines and guardrails to build practical tools that make responsible AI a reality among healthcare delivery organizations in service to all our patients.”
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
“Even the best healthcare today still suffers from many challenges that AI-driven solutions can substantially improve. However, just as we wouldn’t think of treating patients with a new drug or device without ensuring and monitoring their efficacy and safety, we must test and monitor AI-derived models and algorithms before and after they are deployed across diverse healthcare settings and populations, to help minimize and prevent unintended harms,” said Dr. Peter J. EmbÃ, professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) and senior vice president for research and innovation at VUMC. “It is imperative that we work together and share tools and capabilities that enable systematic AI evaluation, surveillance and algorithmvigilance for the safe, effective and equitable use of AI in healthcare. TRAIN is a major step toward that goal.”
Microsoft
“When it comes to AI’s tremendous capabilities, there is no doubt the technology has the potential to transform healthcare. However, the processes for implementing the technology responsibly are just as vital,” said Dr. David Rhew, global chief medical officer and vice president of healthcare, Microsoft. “By working together, TRAIN members aim to establish best practices for operationalizing responsible AI, helping improve patient outcomes and safety while fostering trust in healthcare AI.”
Advocate Health
“At Advocate Health, innovation is at the core of our drive to advance the science of medicine,” said Dr. Rasu Shrestha, executive vice president and chief innovation and commercialization officer for Advocate Health. “As we seek to make care more accessible and affordable for all, address the root causes of health inequities and provide the best health outcomes for our patients, we believe the responsible application of AI and leveraging key partnerships in this space will be essential as we reimagine how care delivery can be improved in the future.”
For more information, visit tinyurl.com/4u8r7t6f.
