There’s undoubtedly a place for AI in healthcare but it’s important to focus on appropriately implementing these technologies.

That was the heart of the message from Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker on the opening day of World Medical Innovation Forum in Boston.

Baker, formerly CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, emphasized the importance of data security and being clear about the challenges to implementing new technology.

“My advice to all of you is to recognize and understand that people in healthcare get held to a higher standard,” Baker said. “That’s just the way it is. That’s not a bad thing because people believe in you, and believe in what you are capable of, and what you can do.”

Other sectors in the tech industry have experienced some significant missteps when it comes to data security, Baker said, pointing specifically to controversies over Facebook’s use of data and how that has shaped the public’s opinion.

“Think about some of the hammers that have come down on other major enterprises — in retail, in financial services, public sector entities — because their platforms have been penetrated and people have been able to cause some pretty significant heartburn to the customers, employees and others once they got inside,” he said. “Here in the healthcare world, people think differently about what they expect from you than what they expect from a traditional retailer or financial service organization or just about anybody else.”

And while he shares the hopes of many stakeholders for advances offered by AI and other technologies, Baker cited his own experience as an executive to highlight the importance of not over-promising. 

“I’m not a tech person but I was the guy in many cases to make the no-go decision, with respect to major investments in technology,” Baker said. “I’ve always found that if I took whatever the tech people were telling me and I divided it by 10, then I got to what was likely to happen, with respect to the capacity to perform.”

That said,  he recognizes that technology could be instrumental in changing the way the industry treats patients in the future — in particular by helping doctors make decisions. 

“My one piece of advice,” he said, “as a guy who spent a lot of time in both space, the public and the private, is I would really just focus on the places where AI is a tool to make our organization smarter, and can get us answers to questions we think are important quicker.”