AI growth across healthcare is occuring at a rapid clip. In an Oct. 6 article published by Forbes, contributor Randy Bean sat down with leaders at the Cleveland Clinic to discuss its approach and strategies to implementing AI across an organization with 81,000 employees worldwide.
Here are three takeaways for ASCs:
1. Commitment to organization education on AI: A major pillar of Cleveland Clinic's AI strategy is ensuring that those within the organization are properly educated on its use at all levels of practice. Cleveland Clinic recently hosted their first annual analytics and AI summit, which included 1,000 attendees, 100 of whom were physicians from every major part of Cleveland Clinic.
"Our strategy to integrate AI into our organization involves embedding AI into our cultural DNA," said Albert Marinez, Cleveland Clinic's first chief analytics officer. "This includes educating our caregivers about AI and showcasing the innovative solutions we're implementing and their potential to improve patient care and operational efficiency."
Cleveland Clinic has also established an AI task force with the goal of bringing a centralized, consistent and transparent approach to the organization's AI strategy. The task force evaluates algorithms for quality, ethics and bias with a cross-disciplinary approach.
2. Focus AI use on operational efficiency: Cleveland Clinic created a Virtual Command Center, in collaboration with Palantir, a software development company, to create a "common operating picture across teams," and use real-time data to better forecast things like patient admissions, staffing levels and wait times.
Optimizing AI's use in the center's operations has also allowed physicians and other providers to spend less time on data admission and other administrative tasks and focus more on interactions with patients.
3. Keeping the future in sight: A major factor in Cleveland Clinic's AI approach and intent is keeping present applications and developments in AI connected to future goals. This means advancing previous pilot projects and focusing on collaborations with technology companies and academic institutions to maximize the expertise going into new AI projects.
"Our collaboration with external innovators is driven by key principles. We look for solutions that tackle real challenges and are ethically sound and unbiased." Mr. Marinez said. "We are focused on identifying high-value use cases where AI can have a significant impact on our caregivers, whether by improving patient outcomes, enhancing diagnostic accuracy or increasing operational efficiency. This focus helps us direct our resources and efforts toward areas with the highest potential benefits."