Dr. Hoberman on defining responsible use of AI in health care

The questions surrounding the responsible use of artificial intelligence in health care and the roles AI should fill today are numerous, as are the potential issues that health care innovations like it could address.

In a recent AMA Update podcast, Brian Hoberman, MD, executive vice president of Information Technology and chief information officer at The Permanente Federation, shared recent experiences with technology that are effective in achieving quality improvements and outcomes for patients. Dr. Hoberman also highlighted the importance of considering ethical implications when applying AI.

Increasing access, improving quality, and addressing physician wellness and burnout are some of the key opportunities to prioritize in health care innovation. An example Dr. Hoberman spotlighted on the podcast was the Kaiser Permanente rollout of AI ambient scribe technology, which was made available to more than 24,000 physicians.

The technology records conversations between patients and clinicians, creating accurate notes for the clinician and post-visit instructions for patients. “What [doctors] love about it is that it increases the patient-[doctor] direct connection, because you don’t have a keyboard and a screen in between them, and it really does save [doctors] time,” said Dr. Hoberman.

Dr. Hoberman noted that ongoing work continues to improve the tool in areas such as specialty care to ensure that specific templates and terms are integrated into the system.

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The role AI can play now in health care

Dr. Hoberman noted that AI can currently assist with burdensome and time-consuming tasks like notetaking.

Discussing AI’s potential to allow physicians to spend more time adding value to quality care, Dr. Hoberman shared an example of dealing with a new patient with a complex medical history. Getting up to speed on the specialist notes took extensive time, which could be streamlined by AI tools that can summarize patient information accurately.

“Ambient [AI] — which is pretty good at reading things and reads faster than I do — can synthesize [information] in a way where I can get a summary of that patient that actually may help me be a better doctor,” said Dr. Hoberman.

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Defining responsible AI use

Determining what doing no harm means in the context of AI includes maintaining patient privacy and avoiding the use of technology with inherent biases in its data or processes, added Dr. Hoberman.

Kaiser Permanente’s approach to health care innovation ensures that new technology provides real value to patient outcomes without introducing new problems for care delivery.

“We don’t prescribe drugs that don’t do the job,” said Dr. Hoberman. “We have to make sure…that when we’re using technology, that it’s purpose-built to do the job that we need to do and that we understand what the risks are when we’re using it.”

Watch the full AMA Update podcast here.