New artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities have the potential to transform the health care industry by enabling better outcomes, improving efficiency and productivity, and reducing costs.
At the HIMSS 2024 Global Health Conference, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and other leading academic medical centers joined as Microsoft announced the formation of a new consortium, the Trustworthy & Responsible AI Network (TRAIN).
TRAIN serves as one of the first health AI networks aimed at operationalizing responsible AI principles to improve the quality, safety, and trustworthiness of AI in health. Additionally, the network is collaborating with OCHIN, which serves a national network of community health organizations with solutions, expertise, clinical insights, and tailored technologies, to help ensure that every organization, regardless of resources, has access to the benefits TRAIN offers.
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 health care organizations and practitioners. As new uses of AI in health care 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.
“Even the best health care 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 health care settings and populations, to help minimize and prevent unintended harms.” said Peter Embí, MD, MS, Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics 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 algorithmovigilance for the safe, effective and equitable use of AI in health care. TRAIN is a major step toward that goal.”
Through collaboration, TRAIN members will help improve the quality and trustworthiness of AI by:
- Sharing best practices related to the use of AI in health care settings, including the safety, reliability, and monitoring of AI algorithms, and the skillsets required to manage AI responsibly.
- 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 health care 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 to capture real-world outcomes related to efficacy, safety, and optimization of AI algorithms.
“When it comes to AI’s tremendous capabilities, there is no doubt the technology has the potential to transform health care. However, the processes for governing 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 to improve patient outcomes and safety while fostering trust in health care AI.”
