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Thank you to Consumer Technology Association and the leadership of René Quashie and Ami Bhatt, MD for hosting the recent Health AI+ Symposium at Harvard Medical School. It mattered a lot that the room included so many people with very different expertise and experience—this kind of diversity will be key to using AI to actually build more equitable health innovations. Chris Gibbons, MD, MPH, René Quashie and I joined forces to share how AI matters to health equity and where it's making important advancements. Many folks shaped these insights from CTA's community including Lisa K. Fitzpatrick MD, MPH, MPA, Michael R. Crawford, Crystal Grant, Ph.D., Meg Barron, Gaurav Manchanda and many others! I walked away with three insights and questions. 1) AI is massively accelerating health innovation. According to Rock Health data, there are over 500 venture backed digital health startups in the US that have AI enabled solutions with $18B in venture funding from 2021-2023, and that number is growing. In that time, top therapeutic areas for AI startup investment were oncology ($1.9B), cardiovascular care ($1.8B), and mental health ($1.4B). How is all of this momentum around AI advancing health equity—and where could it? Thus is a huge opportunity space for health innovators. 2) In many ways, AI is like any innovation where we need to bring an equity lens and consider: Who is designing these AI innovations? Who is gaining access and who are these advancements benefiting? Who is getting funding to propel this technology? The people behind the technology matter and we can all be doing more to join forces, collaborate and bring more leaders together. 3) Anyone who cares to advance health equity needs proof points of where AI can be a force for good. To be sure, there is much to be cautious about and many examples of real harm that we should take seriously. Most examples will need feedback for improvement, but that’s true of most innovations regardless of AI. The important part is that we keep learning and collaborating to make the innovations work better for more people. One encouraging example that Casey Ross at STAT recently wrote about is the Health AI Partnership, which is leveraging AI to advance health equity for rural populations, at a time when rural hospitals are closing at alarming rates. To do so, this collaboration is offering rural hospitals the chance to integrate AI into administrative processes that will reduce costs and improve efficiencies. And that is just one of many encouraging examples surfaced in our conversation at the symposium. I am excited to learn and share more examples of where AI is showing promise and potential to advance health equity.
Mark Sendak
2mo
Hi Katie Drasser, thank you for calling out the work that we are doing through Health AI Partnership. Please let us know next time you organize an event and we’d be happy to send representatives. Would be great to include folks from community and rural settings seeking to leverage AI.
Katie Drasser, admire Rock Health's work in supporting innovation in digital health. Given nurses' crucial role in patient care, I'm curious about effective strategies for developing robust engaging in AI tool development. What best practices have you found successful in fostering meaningful collaboration with nursing and allied health professionals during the design and development phase?
Katie Drasser thank you for sharing your key insights and questions as we all collaboratively work to build more equitable health innovations! I'm curious, do you think oncology and cardiovascular care are the top therapeutic areas due to AI-enabled clinical decision-making tools specifically in imaging?
Rita Mcwaters
2mo
This symposium sounds like a pivotal step towards integrating AI and health equity! Looking forward to seeing more such initiatives in the future!
It was great seeing you Katie Drasser! Looking forward to working more together!
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2moLove this Katie, there is so much more that can done when we intentionally have a health equity lens.