Coalition formed to transform healthcare through AI adoption

A new coalition has been established in the US to help advance healthcare through maximising innovations in artificial intelligence (AI). This follows the setting up of a similar coalition for the financial industry – the National Coalition for Artificial Intelligence in Financial Services – a year ago with the aim of helping to figure out how AI can deliver deeper societal impact. 

Similarly, this new coalition, unveiled in January 2022, is looking to artificial intelligence for solutions to significant societal and industrial barriers, but this time in the advancement of healthcare. 

An initiative of Microsoft, the Artificial Intelligence Industry Innovation Coalition (AI3C) convenes US leading public, private, educational and research organisations across healthcare, life sciences and technology, including Novant Health, Cleveland Clinic, Providence and the University of Virginia, to co-create AI solutions for positive societal and healthcare outcomes, identify and set the AI strategy and vision for various projects, and track the success of AI adoption in the industry.

“With perspectives from AI practitioners, healthcare professionals and the research community, the AI3C can guide collaborative projects that accelerate the translation of frontier technologies from research to solution development, to implementation,” says Ashley Llorens, VP, Microsoft Research and Incubations.

The AI3C board will host quarterly meetings and events to communicate progress of solving key challenges through AI adoption, including digital skills and employability, data privacy and industry standards. 

Goal to accelerate AI innovation and adoption

To achieve its primary objective of accelerating AI innovation and adoption, the AI3C plans to showcase emerging AI tools, gather industry-specific AI use cases, best practices and research feedback, transform the AI workforce, and prepare students for careers in AI and data science. 

To achieve this, board members will deliver a comprehensive program for responsible AI education and up-skilling, and importantly interact with the healthcare community through white papers, new tools and programs, as well as social media outreach, to make AI more applicable and impactful.

Among the AI topics the coalition will provide recommendations and advice on are:

• responsible healthcare innovation
• health equity 
• workforce transformation

Potential of AI in future of healthcare for all

AI has the potential to advance healthcare in many ways, from making access to healthcare more equitable by creating unbiased personalised medicine and improving access to care, to accelerating clinical research thereby speeding up discovery and individualisation of medicine. 

For Duke Health, a member organisation that is passionate about eliminating inequities in clinical care, “AI will empower us to redesign the care delivery system at the population level” and create “health equity for our generation and future generations”, says Shamyla Lando, CTO.

Member organisation Novant Health is also committed to innovation in helping to rescue health inequity and improve access to care and believes that cross-industry collaboration and advanced technology can help achieve this. 

The potential of AI in healthcare is boundless. While for The Cleveland Clinic, the potential for AI-used clinical research is immense, enabling the clinic to “ask questions in new ways, speed discovery, and begin individualising medicine”, according to CIO Matthew Kull; for Duke Health, AI in healthcare “provides us powerful tools to address systemic challenges by identifying true root causes”, says Lands. 

Sister coalition spotlights AI innovation in the financial sector

The setting up of this coalition in the healthcare sector follows in the footsteps of a similar coalition set up a year ago to activate AI across the financial sector.

Unveiled in December 2020, the National Council for Artificial Intelligence (NCAI) brings together players such as Mastercard, Microsoft, Nasdaq and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to both address significant societal and industry barriers and co-create AI solutions for positive societal and financial impact, identify and set the AI strategy and vision for a wide range for products, and track AI adoption progress. 

Objectives include lowering the risk of AI adoption and bias; lowering the barrier of entry to innovate; defining the educational journey for the AI talent of the future; and serving as an advisor of vision, information and multidisciplinary partnership with a focus on AI policy. 

According to Ed Fandrey, VP of Financial Services, Microsoft US, the NCAI coalition “brings partners together across the industry to ensure AI and the technologies underpinning it are transparent and safe for not only financial services customers but throughout the regulated industry”.