Generative AI (GenAI), a form of AI that’s trained to find patterns in data and then generate new content, is emerging as a digital accelerator in healthcare. From streamlining operations to enhancing patient care, GenAI offers immense potential. However, harnessing its power requires a strategic approach that prioritizes governance, ethics, and security.
GenAI tools, like CoPilot, Gemini, and ChatGPT, have become increasingly integrated into all major health IT platforms (enterprise resource planning (ERP), EHR, and everything in between). Now is the time for leaders to establish robust plans to guide adoption and ensure adequate oversight when using the technology to advance care delivery.
Building a holistic team for effective GenAI governance
To drive strategic use and monitor value, healthcare leaders should align GenAI initiatives with enterprise-wide priorities. Leaders must also expand existing governance structure membership to incorporate ethics, security, compliance, and subject matter expertise. Depending on the size of a health system, one leader may fill more than one of these new governance roles:
- Ethics officer: defines and implements ethical guidelines for GenAI use, addressing issues like bias, fairness, and transparency
- Chief information security officer: represents all security aspects of GenAI deployments, including data protection and cybersecurity
- Chief compliance officer: ensures compliance with regulations related to GenAI, such as data protection and privacy laws
- GenAI advisor: provides insights around GenAI trends and supports the committee in understanding new opportunities and risks as an external, independent advisor that can offer an unbiased perspective
Reimaging healthcare processes for GenAI success
To support the successful execution of approved GenAI use cases, adjustments are also needed within existing enterprise-wide processes:
- Intake and prioritization can help organizations align GenAI initiatives to strategic priorities, goals, and objectives, allocate resources, and monitor GenAI project outcomes with clear metrics for value creation. Before investing in additional niche solutions, leaders should understand and evaluate the GenAI capabilities of large technology partners within their health system’s ecosystem.
- Lifecycle management drives continuous improvement by maintaining and enhancing the initial semantic layers, visual dashboards, and models used in GenAI functions.
- Analytics are vital to create and maintain best practices and support GenAI-driven insights and decision-making.
- Data governance establishes data quality, metadata maturity, and organizational alignment for GenAI use cases.
GenAI has the potential to enable meaningful advances for patients, clinicians, and healthcare organizations. By developing agile and comprehensive governance structures that center on ethical, secure, and compliant use and building a sustainable data ecosystem, we can responsibly unlock the clinical, operational, and financial value of this powerful technology.
Ready to explore how GenAI can integrate into your roadmap and enhance your healthcare organization? Schedule a 1:1 call with a Nordic consultant.