Newswise — LOS ANGELES (April 10, 2024) — Cedars-Sinai has joined a White House initiative to ensure that healthcare providers and companies use artificial intelligence (AI) ethically and responsibly. Along with the US Department of Health and Human Services, the AI effort announced in late 2023 is a consortium of nearly 40 health systems and insurers.
“Cedars-Sinai is honored to be a part of this collective commitment to the responsible use of AI in healthcare recognized by the White House,” said Craig Kwiatkowski, PharmD, senior vice president and chief information officer at Cedars-Sinai. “This pledge reflects our commitment to principles that prioritize fairness, appropriateness, validity, effectiveness and safety in the use of AI for scientific discovery and improved patient care.”
As described by the White House, members’ voluntary commitments reflect a series of actions that emphasize three core principles: safety, security and trust.
By joining the initiative, Cedars-Sinai is committed to:
- Vigorously developing AI solutions to optimize healthcare delivery and payment by improving healthcare equity, expanding access, making healthcare more affordable, improving outcomes through more coordinated care, improving the patient experience and reducing physician burnout.
- Make sure the results are aligned with the AI principles of Fair, Appropriate, Valid, Effective and Safe – referred to as “FAVES” in AI circles.
- Implement “trust mechanisms” that inform users if content is largely AI-generated and not reviewed or edited by a human.
- Adhere to a risk management framework that includes comprehensive tracking of boundary model-driven applications and reporting of potential harms and mitigation steps.
- Research, research and rapidly develop AI solutions, but do so responsibly.
These commitments align with Cedars-Sinai’s AI strategy, which is guided by its AI Council. The AI Council brings together cross-functional leaders—from patient care, research, data, and technology teams—to review, guide, and coordinate the health system’s AI strategy. The Council provides a forum for open dialogue and ongoing exchange of ideas while setting institutional and systemic priorities, evaluating the use of AI tools, and identifying measures of success.
Jason Moore, Ph.D., founding member of the Council on Artificial Intelligence and chair of the Department of Computational Biomedicine at Cedars-Sinai, says the White House initiative reaffirms Cedars-Sinai’s commitment to the ethical, responsible and science-based use of AI .
“As one of the first to use artificial intelligence and machine learning in healthcare, Cedars-Sinai ensures that our efforts are not only conducted ethically and responsibly, but also significantly improve the lives of our patients,” Moore said. “This White House initiative is another tool in our arsenal to ensure that our research and applied uses are innovative, patient-centered and long-lasting.”
In addition to the White House Initiative on AI in Healthcare, Cedars-Sinai recently joined the Trustworthy & Responsible AI Network, or TRAIN, a governance network. Led by Microsoft, this network of healthcare institutions aims to put the guidelines for responsible AI into practice.
Through this consortium, the collective whole will act to apply responsible AI principles to improve the quality, safety and reliability of AI in healthcare. Participants will share best practices and be provided with tools to measure outcomes related to AI implementation.
Kwiatkowski said Cedars-Sinai will work with the network to refine internal tools and validation processes as a first step, and then look to build on that through network collaboration, unified sharing models and a registry of AI results.
“These projects and collaborations are critical to our ongoing efforts at Cedars-Sinai and in healthcare as a whole as we continue to explore new tools and use cases,” Kwiatkowski said.
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