Given the speed and accuracy that new AI can bring to medical research and clinical support, it’s no surprise that researchers and clinicians tend to view the emerging technologies favorably.

With patients, however, successfully reaching an appropriate comfort level can be a bit trickier.

As Susannah Rose, director of patient experience research at Cleveland Clinic, recently put it in an interview at MobiHealthNews, “I’m a true believer in the potential for the technology, particularly when it comes to experience, but we want to make sure we are putting guard rails around these uses to make sure that the data we are using is being used in ethical ways, and is aligned with patients' best interests. Also, [we need to make sure] we are using these technologies in ways that will enhance experience and will help improve things such as healthcare disparities and other things that we can see as healthcare challenges, and we will not perpetuate this problem.”

Rose will be discussing the matter in depth in a session at HIMSS20 in March, titled "Finding Solutions Before Problems: AI, Ethics and Experience.”

“Historically, we focused on human innovations in healthcare to really drive patient experience,” Rose explained, “but we are now not only focusing on human factors like communication skills, training and nursing interventions, … but also looking at technology.”

Indeed, she noted, at Cleveland Clinic, AI and virtual care technologies have already come into play when delivering care.

“We have found that over 90% of patients using this type of care feel it is as good as an in-person encounter with their clinicians, and over 50% feel it is better than an in-person encounter with their physician. This is an important finding because, I’ll be honest, I was a little bit of a cynic. I did not think there was anyway a virtual encounter would be perceived as better than an in-person one let alone by over half the people that use it.”

While Rose’s experience at Cleveland Clinic may have changed her views on virtual care, she says systems need to have protections in place when implementing tech initiatives.

“Today there are more and more conversations taking place across the country about how to ethically use patients’ data to improve technologies such as AI and machine learning,” she explained.  “I think the most critical aspect of this is healthcare leaders need to be very thoughtful and knowledgeable about AI, ML and these other technologies. In order to do that, they need to be informed about the risks and benefits research (that) needs to be done.” 

Rose will be speaking on Friday, March 13, at 10:45 a.m. to 11:45 p.m. in room W303A.