Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and Duke University School of Medicine have been awarded a $1.25 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for the “Measuring Artificial Intelligence (AI) Maturity in Healthcare Organizations” project.
Working with the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) and the University of Iowa, a team of experts will leverage the grant to develop a mature model framework. Project leaders are Peter Emby, MD, MS, and Lori Novak, PhD, MHSA, from VUMC, and Michael Pencina, PhD, and Nicoletta Economo, PhD, from Duke.
This framework will outline the capabilities that health systems must have to ensure they are well prepared for the trusted use of AI models.
The promise of AI to improve health and healthcare is great, but there is currently a wide gap between promise and reality.”
Peter Emby, MD, MS, is professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics and senior vice president for research and innovation at VUMC.
“This work will create new tools and capabilities that our health system needs to ensure that we select, deploy and monitor health AI to make healthcare safer, more effective, ethical and equitable for all.”
According to the team’s assessment, health systems are actively developing and using algorithmic technologies; However, there is a significant gap in oversight, resources and organizational infrastructure. This gap hinders the ability to comprehensively document what algorithms are currently deployed, what their value is, who is monitoring them, and who is responsible for their use. This gap compromises the safety, fairness and quality of these technologies.
“If we are to realize the full potential of AI technology, health systems must develop more mature processes for implementing these tools. Improving the oversight of AI technology in healthcare systems is critical to ensuring the safety and effectiveness of patient care,” said Pencina, Duke Health chief. Data Scientist and Duke School of Medicine’s Vice Dean for Data Science.
“With this grant, we are taking an important step toward ensuring the safe, accountable, standards-based deployment of AI in the health system,” Pencina said.
“Our team in the Vanderbilt Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) has a long tradition of scholarship on technology and organization, beginning with Dr. Nancy Lorenzi, who pioneered an informatics focus on workflow and management. We are excited to work with our partners at Duke, University of Iowa, University of Health AI and the Moore Foundation to develop an empirically supported maturity model for healthcare AI,” said Novak, associate professor at DBMI and Vanderbilt’s Center of Excellence in Applied Director of AI.
Over the next year, the VUMC and Duke teams will engage with CHAI and a variety of health system stakeholders to outline critical health system components for the faithful implementation of AI.
“Building a maturity model framework for health AI will enable health systems to identify their strengths and weaknesses when procuring and deploying AI solutions, ultimately furthering the transformation of healthcare,” said Economo, director of the Algorithm-Based Clinical Decision Support Oversight. At Duke AI Health.