The Pennsylvania-based health system plans to expand the use of AI tools in digital diagnostics and adopt AI tools in new clinical care areas such as chart summarization.
WellSpan Health has gained confidence in implementing AI tools in clinical care and plans to launch more AI tools.
The Pennsylvania-based, nine-hospital health system was among more than a dozen health systems and hospitals that participated in the HealthLeaders AI in Clinical Care Mastermind program this year. In addition to holding several virtual discussions about AI tools in clinical care, participants met in person last month for roundtable discussions as part of the HealthLeaders CMO Exchange in Utah.
WellSpan Health has been generating positive results from AI tools in clinical care, according to Mark Kandrysawtz, MBA, senior vice president and chief innovation officer at the health system.
"We have experienced the impact of AI in clinical care, we feel confident that there is value in our AI solutions, we are expanding our AI solutions, and we are now setting new goals that will push us faster and farther to help transform the organization using AI," Kandrysawtz says.
The new goals include using AI tools to increase the human capacity of care teams, Kandrysawtz explains.
"What we mean by that is finding areas where there will be significant value and we can return time to our team members, so they can focus on patient care," Kandrysawtz says. "We also want to remove administrative burden."
One area where WellSpan Health plans to expand AI tools in clinical care is digital diagnostics.
"We are expanding our relationships with existing digital diagnostic partners," Kandrysawtz says. "Over the past three years, we have been able to measure the impact of about a dozen AI solutions that we have in place for digital diagnostics. That has given us confidence to embrace new solutions more rapidly in the digital diagnostics space."
WellSpan Health is also planning to adopt AI tools in new areas of clinical care.
"We are investigating AI tools such as clinical decision support to give real-time feedback to help clinicians make decisions," Kandrysawtz says. "We also are investigating AI tools that can conduct chart summarization, which can reduce the burden of preparing for a clinical encounter. Years of clinical information can be summarized quickly using an AI tool."
Mark Kandrysawtz, MBA, is senior vice president and chief innovation officer at WellSpan Health. Photo courtesy of WellSpan Health.
Evolution of AI governance
WellSpan Health has also streamlined AI governance.
"We are taking the approach of integrating AI governance directly into the quality and safety framework that we use as an institution," Kandrysawtz says. "We track and monitor AI solutions in the same way we would track the operational output of our human team members. Instead of AI governance being a separate group, it is now part of how we manage innovation and transformation overall."
WellSpan Health does not expect any new federal regulations that will impact AI governance, but the health system is preparing for new regulations at the state level.
"We believe there will be some new approaches to AI regulation on monitoring quality and safety as well as reporting on that efficacy," Kandrysawtz says.
New state regulations that could impact AI governance at WellSpan Health include relying less on vendors for reporting on quality and safety for AI tools, according to Kandrysawtz.
"Many AI vendors are monitoring the safety and efficacy of their solutions, and they have built technological approaches to this monitoring such as supervisory AI tools," Kandrysawtz says. "But we believe we are not going to be able to rely on the reporting of vendors. We will have to be able to audit and attest for the AI solutions we are using in the organization even if they are procured from a third party."
Collaboration with AI tool vendors
"The number of AI vendors we collaborate with has increased over the past year, and we are bullish about AI vendor collaboration," Kandrysawtz says. "We are focusing on the problems we want to solve and setting goals to solve those problems. We know AI is unlocking the ability to solve those problems at scale in a way that we could not achieve before."
WellSpan Health has been intentional in building the competencies necessary to work with AI vendors.
"One of those competencies is the ability to be an effective co-development partner," Kandrysawtz says. "We have done a lot of work with early-stage companies in embracing their technology and helping them scale and succeed by bringing our ingenuity to the table. We will continue to do that and expand that type of partnering relationship with AI vendors."
The HealthLeaders Exchange is an exclusive, executive community for sharing ideas, solutions, and insights.
To find out more about the HealthLeaders Exchange program, visit the program’s webpage or the program’s LinkedIn page. To inquire about attending a HealthLeaders Exchange event and becoming a member, email us at exchange@healthleadersmedia.com.
Christopher Cheney is the CMO editor at HealthLeaders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
WellSpan Health's experience with AI tools in clinical care includes demonstrating value from AI solutions.
The health system is setting new goals for AI tools, including generating more time for care team members to spend with patients.
As part of the evolution of AI governance at WellSpan Health, the health system is conducting AI governance as part of its pre-existing quality and safety framework as opposed to having a separate AI governance group.