The conversation around healthcare AI is maturing, according to one hospital executive.
During an interview last month, Zafar Chaudry, chief digital officer and chief AI and information officer at Seattle Children’s, said that there has been a lot more talk surrounding the governance and regulation of healthcare AI in the past year or so.
“Remember, it’s not just about technology. People and process are a big problem in all of this,” he declared.
Over the past year, Chaudry said he has noticed the healthcare industry increasing its focus on the ethical and safety considerations of AI, as well as the transparency aspect.
For instance, some lawmakers have sounded the alarm on payers that use AI to deny claims. And organizations like the Coalition for Health AI Coverage (CHAI) and VALID AI are ramping up their efforts to develop standardized AI governance frameworks.
As the industry continues to get more serious about AI, it has become clear that AI tools very rarely work as out-of-the box solutions, Chaudry added.
“I have not seen a lot of actual, tangible use cases that [AI companies] are actually solving. There’s some, but many are very much ‘If you tell us what the problem is, we’ll build the solution for you,’” he explained. “I sort of compare it to when you get your iPhone, you download a whole bunch of apps, and then you can do a whole bunch of things.”
When hospitals enter into contracts with AI developers to build tools that are the right fit, the two parties should share risk, Chaudry remarked.
This type of contract is not popular. He said most AI developers want to be compensated for their time and materials.
“The problem with the time and materials-type contract is, if I have a great idea, and you agree to build it for me, wouldn’t you love to build it for a long period of time because then my bill keeps going up? It’s very hard to cost-control that,” Chaudry explained.
Ideally, the hospital and AI company would draw up a contract in which the hospital pays on a milestone basis — and only if the product performs well, he said.
As it stands now, hospitals’ contracts with tech vendors usually don’t guarantee that the product they’re investing in will deliver the intended result, Chaudry declared.
“If you want a blue car and they deliver you a red car, would you just accept the red car? You’d say, ‘Hey, something’s wrong here.’ But with AI in healthcare, it seems to be ‘Well, we’ll kind of give you what you want, and then we’re done,’” he stated.
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