The Pressing Need to Move from Isolation to Collective Transformation in Generative AI
The democratization of AI tool development, particularly in Generative AI, is leading to duplicative efforts, a lack of clarity, and ultimately a loss of trust in the innovations presented.
The democratization of AI tool development, particularly in Generative AI, is leading to duplicative efforts, a lack of clarity, and ultimately a loss of trust in the innovations presented. It is imperative to avoid an unnecessary loss of efficiency and dearth of equitable expansion through collective collaboration.
This is my first Substack post and I could not think of a better topic than Generative AI (Gen AI) and the pressing need to reflect upon the lessons learned from all prior technology implementations, so we can do this right for patients, clinicians, our healthcare organizations, and society as a whole!
Gen AI: a watershed moment that comes with hype and the trough of disillusionment
Most of us acknowledge that Gen AI is a watershed moment for society, and especially in healthcare. Gen AI represents the future of patient engagement and clinical decision support, automation of low-value tasks like coding and note-taking, and the transformation of hospital operations, medical education, and research. That is to say, Gen AI has the potential to be the ultimate productivity tool to fulfill our quadruple aim (enhancing patient experience, improving population health, reducing costs, and improving clinicians experience).
However, with all this hope, comes the hype. And this hype of individual innovation and shiny objects ultimately leads to the trough of disillusionment once we realize we are not able to achieve the impact from technology that has been promised to us. Gen AI is likely now close to the peak of its hype, crossing the tipping point with recent reports of hallucinations, privacy concerns, and security leaks. At this point, most healthcare organizations are choosing to navigate this precarious path alone; but, in these efforts, there is more often than not a lack of coherent AI strategy, governance framework, and adoption roadmap, let alone a defined approach to building the novel science of Generative AI technologies in particular. So, we unfortunately find the healthcare industry continuing on a path that will lead to a tremendous waste of precious healthcare resources, pilotitis with point and click solutions that are unlikely to translate into meaningful transformation, confusion with the problem of plenty, neglect of individual privacy, and an exponential increase in security attacks led by Gen AI bots, all bringing us to the trough of siloed disillusionment and hopelessness.
In order to avoid the pointless despair of AI overload, missed opportunities, and misappropriation of potentially lifesaving tech, healthcare needs to be intentional in creating the second peak in the Gartner hype cycle by moving from isolation to open innovation and collective transformation.
The Need for Open Innovation and Collective Transformation
Open innovation has the potential to widen the space for value creation. According to the Oxford Review, open innovation is a term that describes and is used to promote an information age mindset toward innovation that runs counter to the secrecy and silo mentality of traditional corporate research labs and venture backed startups. Use of the term 'open innovation' has been promoted in particular by Henry Chesbrough, adjunct professor and faculty director of the Center for Open Innovation of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkely.
Henry Chesbrough, as pictured above, describes the need and promise for open innovation in the below quote:
“No one has a monopoly on knowledge the way that, say, IBM had in the 1960s in computing, or that Bell Labs had through the 1970s in communications. When useful knowledge exists in companies of all sizes and also in universities, non-profits and individual minds, it makes sense to orient your innovation efforts to accessing, building upon and integrating that external knowledge into useful products and services.”
There are many benefits that come from implementing open innovation into your business model, including reduced cost for research and development, improvement in development productivity, performance improvement in planning and delivery of projects, enhanced digital transformation, not to mention a myriad of social equity benefits. In my experience, initiating radical collaboration with innovation through collective learning leads to outcomes that could potentially shape different industries.
But the question is—how to bring open innovation to our diverse healthcare landscape where there are competing and often conflicting interests between health systems, health plans, and corporations?
Framework to bring open innovation and collective mindset to healthcare and beyond
Seven years ago, I coined the term “evidence-based digital medicine (EBDM) and got a chance to work with a wonderful founding team at the NODE.Health (Network of Digital Medicine Evidence in Health) non-profit association. NODE.Health has embraced Open Innovation Principles to help achieve its mission of decreasing fragmentation in digital medicine and AI, in addition to building trust, evidence and equity in digital medicine. Over the many years of working with transformation leaders from our dozens of health systems, health plans, pharmaceutical, and citizen groups, we have distilled the essential ingredients for the so-called recipe of “open innovation and transformation.” Moreover, we know that gatekeeping by individual organizations (or corporations) looking to sell a particular software or system will exacerbate existing inequities between healthcare delivery systems and outcomes, while missing critical opportunities to collaborate.
Call for action
No organization has the skills, resources, or capacity to do this alone for healthcare. I have always believed in the importance of rising to the occasion to fill a need I see presented, and that is why I am proud to announce the upcoming launch of VALID AI. With the University of California and our partners, we have convened VALID AI, a member-led initiative to bring together healthcare organizations (health systems, health plans, national societies, and citizen groups) with the aim to collectively build the new science of Generative AI in healthcare.
VALID AI is:
Vision: Creating a cohesive strategy and shared vision to guide Generative AI research in healthcare, aligning relevant parties, facilitating learning, promoting equitable access to Gen AI resources, and accelerating implementation across member organizations.
Alignment: Helping our member organizations and partners to align with common standards as they evolve and to apply them internally with best-suited organizational frameworks and safe and equitable governance practices.
Learning: Aggregating cutting-edge research on use-cases, implementation science, policy work, and industry standards from the U.S. and around the world. This knowledge will be shared with our member network and key partners through virtual learning sessions, executive briefings, in-person summits, an online portal, and an online forum for sharing ideas.
Implementation: Establishing the Collaborative AI Sandbox to support member organizations with scalable integration, validation, and implementation of Generative AI use-cases. The sandbox program will bring together startups, researchers, and leaders focusing on Generative AI in healthcare with members receiving support and favorable terms for collaboration.
Dissemination: Sharing the knowledge and science generated through collective efforts on a global scale through co-publishing white papers, journal articles, and op-eds to advance innovation and enrich the scientific and business communities. An in-person “Generative AI in Healthcare Summit” will bring together CEOs, C-suite executives, and leading practitioners to discuss advancements and share insights.
Join me and the founding members from healthcare organizations and societies across the US at the inaugural summit and launch event for VALID AI at HLTH on October 9th, in Las Vegas, celebrating us coming together and changing the Gen AI curve of the Gartner Hype Cycle through open innovation and collaboration. Submit a VALID AI interest form before Sept 30th and join us for the launch of the collective in October.