Even as earlier concerns around AI in healthcare are being addressed, new issues are popping up for the quickly evolving technology.
That’s one conclusion from yesterday’s WisPolitics-State Affairs and Wisconsin Technology Council event at the Medical College of Wisconsin. The luncheon explored the use of AI in addressing healthcare workforce shortages.
Outgoing MCW President and CEO Dr. John Raymond warned of emerging dangers for the use of AI in healthcare.
“Initially, the pitfalls were with the quality of the data that were included in training sets, and the tendency of some of these algorithms either to hallucinate or … make things up, and that was a real concern,” he said. “Those are mostly, not completely, but mostly under control now.”
But newer concerns around data privacy and disclosures of how AI and personal data are being used are taking center stage, as ambient AI notetaking systems become the norm for clinicians. A recent survey from the American Medical Association found more than 80% of clinicians now use AI in their everyday practice.
“The ethics of the use of AI and disclosure to your patients about how you’re using their data, how it’s being processed, whether it is HIPAA-compliant in terms of security, compared to the electronic health records … Those are real concerns, and we need to monitor those,” Raymond said yesterday.
The discussion noted the potential for AI to take some of the workload off of providers to reduce burnout, as well as applications in diagnosing disease, improving the patient experience and aiding doctors’ decisionmaking.
But all of those benefits are only possible when the underlying technical infrastructure is in place, according to UW-Milwaukee Prof. Lu He, an expert in health care informatics. She said that poses a real issue, especially for efforts to support underserved communities and rural areas.
“Using AI, we’ll assume they have a smartphone, they will have a good enough system enabled to run those large language models or even speech recognition softwares,” she said. “But in many communities, those infrastructures simply don’t exist, and it’s actually becoming a burden for the patients.”
In addition, she noted a lack of “human infrastructure” to maintain and fix AI systems when they break down, adding “there’s a long way to go” to ensure the technology can benefit everyone.
Meanwhile, a workforce specialist with the Wisconsin Hospital Association yesterday called for being “careful but also move quickly,” noting the pace of change in healthcare has been accelerating for decades.
“AI is going to move even faster than other technology and electronic health records,” said Ann Zenk, WHA’s senior vice president of workforce and clinical practice. “That’s good news, because we have a population challenge in Wisconsin. All Boomers like me are retiring, and we’re also increasing healthcare demand.”
She noted the sector’s “double challenge” of a shrinking workforce and rising demand, pointing to AI as a critical tool for filling in the gaps. Still, both she and Raymond raised the issue of AI actually adding to the burden for health workers, if providers are pushed to see more patients as the technology takes over other tasks for them.
Raymond noted if clinicians are more productive and efficient thanks to AI, “there’s always a temptation for employers” to drop more work on them.
“And maybe even if the institutions aren’t telling you to do that, many of our clinicians are on a productivity-based reimbursement model, so they may self-activate to do that,” he said. “We have to make sure we take care of all aspects of the health care spectrum.”
Yesterday’s panel also touched on the role of government in setting standards for AI use in healthcare. Nick Myers, an entrepreneur and director of AI innovation for Recovery.com, argued “we desperately need” more regulation for the technology.
“Until that happens, we’re going to continue to exist in this environment without standards, without a code of ethics, without any type of governance, trying to integrate it into an industry that, as it should be, is the most regulated industry next to finance we have in this country,” he said.
Raymond added “it’s the Wild West right now” and called for an interoperability framework laid out in regulations. He also backed a uniform national standard for complying with HIPAA.
