For healthcare executives eager to take advantage of new AI, it may be tempting to launch a project simply in the name of getting an oar in the water. But according to Tushar Mehrotra, senior vice president of analytics at Optum, that would be a mistake.
At HIMSS20 in Orlando, Mehrotra and Sanji Fernando, Optum SVP of Artificial Intelligence and Analytics Platforms will give attendees some guidance on how to approach new AI in their presentation, "Insights for Unlocking the Potential of AI in Healthcare.”
As Mehrotra described the challenge recently to HealthcareITNews, "The only way you are going to get value out of AI is to link the clinical or business problem to the organization’s overall strategy and make sure you have a rich enough data set to train the model so it generates actionable insights. Making sure you are building and designing your AI effort the right way means putting in the work up front to create a clear understanding of what you are trying to solve so it can be embedded in the decision-making workflow.”
Meanwhile, in Fernando’s view, "The providers that have seen the most success in AI initiatives are organizations that begin planning around what they are trying to solve, rather than open-ended academic experimentation. From there, consider the data you are using to train your AI models. How rich are the data, how much do you have, and how well do you understand the decisions that will be made off the data?"
At HIMSS20, Mehotra and Fernando's session will be targeted at CEOs, COOs and other healthcare leaders, and it aims to provide practical, actionable advice for health systems hoping to begin taking advantage of recent advances in AI technology.
Given the array of AI options available to newcomers, the two experts will also discuss ways to avoid some common rookie errors.
For example, said Mehrotra, "Depending on where they are in the country and in their AI maturity level, some providers need to put more consideration into how they will access certain kinds of talent to accomplish their goals. While there has been considerable progress in recent years in the distribution of talent beyond the Northeast and West Coast, it can still be tricky. Organizations need to figure out what kind of talent to hire so they don’t, say, bring on 15 data scientists and have them all writing reports.”
Moreover, "some organizations overlook the level of access they have to the data that will feed the models," said Fernando. "AI models are only as powerful as that data you train them on. You need to know your business and the data your business runs on. If you do not have access to the data or the richness of it, you are missing an important piece, which will also limit your ability to link the model to the business problem.”
Tushar Mehrotra and Sanji Fernando will offer more detail during their HIMSS20 presentation, scheduled for Tuesday, March 10, from 4:15-5:15 pm. in room W230A.