Digital Director of Cleveland Clinic: Choosing AI Issues That Clinicians Are Actually Care
Rohit Chandra, chief digital officer of Cleveland Clinic, said ensuring buying from clinicians and other operational end users is one of the trickiest and most important parts of the process when it comes to achieving AI success.
He said in an interview at the Reuters Digital Health Conference in Nashville last week.
Chandra explains that when deploying new AI solutions in its ecosystem, hospitals must ensure that end users are fully engaged – not only to understand the tool, but also to work with vendors to help refine it and integrate it seamlessly into existing workflows.
Given that AI Tools end users are usually doctors and nurses, navigating this change management process can be challenging for hospital leaders.
“They are all overworked, so [you have to] Make sure you choose a question to make the caregiver’s job easier. If it’s funny – “Oh, it’s funny”, that’s not good enough,” Chandra declared.
In order to make clinicians buy, hospitals should first adopt AI solutions to solve the most important problems for doctors and nurses to them, he said.
Chandra points out that this is why AI scribes see such high adoption rates among clinicians. The burden of documentation is a major stressor in their lives, so they are committed to using and fine-tuning solutions to this problem.
Chandra also noted that clinicians are more likely to lag behind AI solutions when hospital leaders clearly emphasize their potential to improve patient outcomes. After all, providing quality care to patients is the reason most doctors and nurses enter the field first.
He mentioned sepsis prediction AI as an example.
“No one would disagree that this is a key issue – 1,000 people die in the country every day due to sepsis-related complications. If you choose a question and you have a shared commitment to make meaningful differences, that is a great starting point,” Chandra said.
Ensure that end users really care about the ultimate goal of AI solutions is essential, as achieving AI success is often a long way to go. Chandra said the purchase must be done from the beginning or clinicians will not be committed to refining and adapting to all the hard work that AI tools come with in the hospital.
Overall, building trust and buying can be a slow and incremental process – relying on “one success” at a time.
He believes that AI is ready to change most industries, which is worthy of optimism.
“If we are united, if we do well, health care should be easier to obtain, more affordable, and much better with three, five or seven years of clinical outcomes,” Chandra declared.
Source: metorworks, Getty Images
