Latest news with #Intersect2025
Business Journals
02-05-2025
- Health
- Business Journals
Using AI for good: Advancing health equity and saving lives
For all its power to transform administration and innovation, AI can revolutionize equity and access to care and become a force for good in the medical field. At Intersect 2025, San Francisco General Hospital Foundation (SFGHF) CEO Kim Meredith sat down with Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (ZSFG) Cardiologist Dr. Lucas Zier for the breakout panel, 'Using AI for Good: Advancing Health Equity and Saving Lives.' Sponsored by the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, this presentation discussed the incredible results AI has already created here in San Francisco, including the reduction of heart failure readmission rates by 13 percent and mortality rates by six percent. The panels also discussed the potential of public-private partnerships and ways to deal with constricted federal funding. Through the Zuckerberg Patient Care and Quality Improvement Fund (ZPCQI), SFGHF has invested in Zier's research as co-founder and director of the PROSPECT Lab at ZSFG (Pioneering Research and Organizational Solutions to Promote Equitable Care through Technology) — the digital innovation team at the city's public hospital. 'Our foundation represents the potential of public-private partnership, bringing private support for this public institution. We are investing in new technologies, especially AI,' Meredith says. The patients at ZSFG are extremely diverse, making equity of access to treatment a priority. According to Meredith, 'About 40 percent of our patients are from the LatinX community, 20 percent from the Asian American community, and 15 percent are from the African American community. And more than 90 percent of all our patients benefit from some sort of public assistance.' Zier serves as Director of Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes at ZSFG and an Associate Professor at UCSF. His work with the PROSPECT Lab began in 2017, 'not because of some major technological breakthrough, but to solve a problem in our system. We had major challenges with heart failure care, particularly with elevated readmission rates. Inequities led to elevated mortality rates,' Zier explains. 'These issues put us at risk of losing $1.2 million per year of public funding.' The PROSPECT Lab initially developed AI pilots which were successful, but not scalable across ZSFG. 'We built an integrated AI model to identify our highest-risk heart failure patients with basic machine learning,' Zier says. By tailoring risk prediction to suggest specific actions, the PROSPECT Lab team reduced readmission rates by 13 percent and mortality rates by 6 percent. The new AI-driven model also eliminated significant equity gaps in outcomes for African American heart failure patients. 'By meeting the readmission metrics and retaining $1.2 million a year in public funding, we've saved the health system almost $8 million in total,' Zier says. This success has made Zier a national leader in AI and medical equity. ZSFG recently hosted leaders from 15 public hospitals across the US, including Parkland Hospital in Dallas and Grady Hospital in Atlanta, to share this new approach to saving lives. Describing what makes the Prospect Lab so unique, Zier says, 'We had a clear problem we were trying to solve, and a clear plan for improving ROI. My lab is very bullish about machine learning and AI, though we understand that we can't just flag who is high risk but must link those patients to specific workflows and plans. For example, we identified that our patients who had heart failure and were using methamphetamines were at considerable risk. So, we developed the Heart Plus clinic staffed with both heart failure and addiction medicine specialists.' The PROSPECT Lab owes much of its success to a combination of public and private funding, which Meredith endorses as a key component to successfully integrating innovation and healthcare. 'When I think of scaling, my first instinct is to start with private philanthropy,' she says, 'then work with public institutions and government to expand across the country.' Even with interest in AI at an all-time high, the current political climate poses challenges to any healthcare research, especially regarding equity and inclusion. 'Funding for health equity research is at risk right now, so other sources, including philanthropy, can step in,' says Zier. 'Health systems should not be deploying large-scale tools without a pilot to demonstrate efficacy. By starting small and expanding, researchers and providers can build the organizations they need.' The PROSPECT Lab is a case study for how AI and machine learning, when applied strategically, can make an enormous difference for healthcare providers and patients alike, even when equity is out of favor with regulators. For their visionary work, ZSFG and the PROSPECT Lab received the Bernard J. Tyson National Award for Excellence in Pursuit of Healthcare Equity in 2024. 'This project took ZSFG from the worst performing safety health system in California to one of the best, if not the very best,' says Zier.
Business Journals
02-05-2025
- Health
- Business Journals
Artificial intelligence and virtual care: Transforming healthcare delivery
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the power to improve patient outcomes while driving down costs, and emerging AI systems have already changed doctor-patient interaction by making virtual visits and remote care significantly more convenient. But adoption of every new technology requires adherence to regulation and a measured, thoughtful approach to ensure that it can deliver what it promises to deliver. At Intersect 2025, three leading minds in healthcare, information, and legal best practices sat down to discuss their individual personal views of the challenges of AI adoption and the regulatory landscape facing AI-enabled solutions. Daniel Cody is a Health Care and Life Sciences Member at leading law firm Mintz, and he spoke about the pressing need for AI-driven solutions in medical care, saying that, 'Hospitals are stressed, especially with ongoing threats to Medicaid and other programs. So, the twin goals of improving outcomes and reducing costs are universal.' Cody went on to list key ways that AI is already improving the experience of providers and patients. 'Remote monitoring devices are more advanced, with AI capabilities. It's not just about helping folks with diabetes and chronic disease track their conditions but being predictive and giving information to their PCPs on a 24/7 basis. AI tools are also fantastic for helping radiologists evaluate images so they can diagnose and start treatment earlier.' The tools we now call AI have actually been in use for years, giving organizations a long runway to find the ideal approach. 'Five years ago, AI was called clinical decision support,' says Adnan E. Hamid, Regional Vice President and Chief Information Officer at CommonSpirit Health. 'As one of the larger Catholic healthcare systems in the nation, CommonSpirit makes sure that when we select technology, it's human centric and mission centric. The goal is to not replace but augment the human interaction between the clinician and patient.' expand To reach this goal, medical organizations must navigate an ever-evolving field of regulations. 'We have a systemwide UC AI Council and similar oversight committees, and a chief AI officer at each medical center. The UC AI Council sponsored the development of the UC Responsible AI Principles, and a publicly-available model risk assessment guide with procurement process questions built in. We offer an AI primer, and many of our education webinars are open to the public. Twenty UC policies connect to UC AI guidance, considering the many privacy and security requirements on the campus and health side,' says Noelle Vidal, Healthcare Compliance and Privacy Officer for the Office of the President of the University of California. Regulations such as HIPAA are all-important when considering whether to use an AI tool, especially since the better-known apps add user data to their own algorithms. 'When ChatGPT was released, our providers were interested in the power of generative AI,' Hamid says. 'But if you enter patient information, it's no longer private but resides as part of the tool. To ensure nobody was accessing ChatGPT from our systems, we accelerated efforts to produce our own internal generative AI tool using Google Gemini on the back end. Data and security are our IT cornerstones.' AI adds a new layer to assess. As Vidal says, "A thorough assessment can take awhile. Whenever we get a request, it goes through a multi-team scan for privacy, security, and other UC requirements, including the new AI assessment questions. An AI tool's use of data continues to evolve and change how impactful the tool will be. Every change in the technology could contradict what we negotiated earlier in a prior contract with the same vendor. We've got different teams to rank the risk of using a tool. I know it frustrates our stakeholders who want to get every innovation in quickly, but we try to balance adoption with risk prevention.' Ultimately, only the AI applications with the most practical uses are going to clear the vetting and regulatory process to change how practitioners improve the patient experience and the efficacy of healthcare. 'The targeted tools that solve real problems are going to win,' Cody says. 'They're going to ensure security and privacy compliance.' As noted by Hamid, 'the fastest way to get technology approved is to have a really good use case. If you can provide the details of how the tool will solve a problem, then users will complete that process faster. Ultimately, AI adoption is influenced by the structure and mission of the organization.'
