Becker's Hospital Review

34 CIO / HEALTH IT The case against AI chiefs for health systems By Laura Dyrda Health systems across the U.S. are incorporating artificial intelligence into clinical and administrative operations. Some health systems have created new C-suite roles to oversee AI strategy and integration. Cleveland Clinic recently appointed a former leader from SiriusXM as their first chief artificial intelligence officer. VCU Health in Richmond, Va., named Alok Chaudhary chief data and artificial intelligence officer earlier this year, and Mayo Clinic Arizona in Phoenix also named Bhavik Patel, MD, chief AI officer last year. But not every health system is rushing to appoint a new AI czar, or even give full responsibility for AI to their current chief information and digital officers. "I'm not a big fan of chief AI officer as a title," said Anthony Chang, MD, chief intelligence and innovation officer at CHOC in Orange, Calif., during a Becker's virutal event July 23. "I think it should be chief intelligence officer combining various parts of human and artificial intelligence because AI can bring out the best in human intelligence as well." Dr. Chang said the C-suite has invited him and his AI- focused colleagues to three recent strategy retreats to become part of the problem solving cohort focusing on predictive models for solving traditional issues. "AI is starting to reach a plateau that we're not being creative enough with AI because the technology is moving so fast and the humans are having trouble keeping up," said Dr. Chang. "It's no longer as creative as it could be, and so AI needs more innovation. But the innovation itself needs more data science and AI aspects, so the two are very intertwined and become a very powerful dyad to solve problems." The proliferation of generative AI over the last year has catalyzed the transformation of the C-suite, seeing technology and artificial intelligence as an essential problem solving tool. Kathy Azeez-Narain, senior vice president and chief digital and innovation officer at Hoag in Newport Beach, Calif., doesn't think chief AI officers are needed for health systems because AI will become ubiquitous, underlying so many aspects of healthcare operations. "If you are in any technology role, you are probably getting so many vendor requests on a daily basis, and everyone starts with 'we got AI'," she said. "That definition is wildly different from tool to tool and partner to partner. I do agree it'll become just part of the fray and the organization's foundation. What I'm really curious about is how all the different roles, from the CFO all the way down to my role, how are you advancing this topic? How are you getting your own bearings and knowledge about where it's applicable for your business line?" Other leaders won't be technologists or understand the depths of AI, but they should be able to converse around the topic and advance AI within their accountabilities. "I see that as an important skillset the full C-suite will need to glean and own," she said. As the chief digital officer, she has a wide spectrum of accountabilities moving along the technology spectrum and leading transformation. Her full role expands much further than just digital accountabilities, and she sees the chief AI officer title as limiting. "You're not going to move to that spectrum if you just have one leader really advocating for that narrative. You're not going to move that spectrum if you only have one group that has knowledge because you need everyone to get on some level of common language systemwide so that they are all trying to get the same direction at minimum in order to achieve [goals] in the business," said Ms. Azeez- Narain. "I see the C-suite not necessarily needing to create net new roles, but evolving some of the roles and their core knowledge set to have this DNA to start to build a bit…we all need to be more data centric and AI can help us actually bring more data to the C-suite table as we're trying to make decisions." Robert Bart, MD, CMIO of UPMC health services division, doesn't see a need for adding chief AI officers into the C-suite either, especially if it's already getting crowded with chief digital, analytics, patient engagement and data officers. "You suddenly have really ballooned the size of your C-suite. It's going to be the traditional c-suite personnel who now incorporate AI into how it matters for their role, that's going to be very important," said Dr. Bart. Clinical leaders are imparting to their teams that while AI won't replace clinicians, physicians who use AI will replace physicians who don't. The same is true for the C-suite, said Dr. Bart. "An AI-naive C-suite person will be replaced by a C-suite person who can incorporate AI into their role within their contribution to the C-suite," said Dr. Bart. "We have to think about how we change our perspective and incorporate AI into the daily practice that we have. [IT leaders] get to help define that for a broad category of individuals within our organization whether it be at the C-suite or the nurse at the bedside, or the consumer or patient wanting to access care at our organization. It really is going to take individual change within all of those roles to actually make healthcare leaders really incorporate AI as something they live and breathe." n

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