The Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) released its highly anticipated "Blueprint for Trustworthy AI Implementation Guidance and Assurance for Healthcare" (Blueprint).
The Blueprint addresses the quickly evolving landscape of health AI tools by outlining specific recommendations to increase trustworthiness within the healthcare community, ensure high-quality care, and meet healthcare needs. The 24-page guide reflects a unified effort among subject matter experts from leading academic medical centers and the healthcare, technology, and other industry sectors, who collaborated under the observation of several federal agencies over the past year.
"Transparency and trust in AI tools that will be influencing medical decisions is absolutely paramount for patients and clinicians," said Dr. Brian Anderson, a co-founder of the coalition and chief digital health physician at MITRE. "The CHAI Blueprint seeks to align health AI standards and reporting to enable patients and clinicians to better evaluate the algorithms that may be contributing to their care."
Webinar to Detail New Blueprint
Members of the CHAI Steering Group will discuss the Blueprint at a webinar on Wednesday, April 5th at 12:00 pm ET. Alan E. Mislove, assistant director for data and democracy, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), will keynote the event. Register to attend here.
"The successful implementation and impact of AI technology in healthcare hinges on our commitment to responsible development and deployment," said Eric Horvitz, chief scientific officer at Microsoft and CHAI co-founder. "I am truly inspired by the incredible dedication, intelligence, and teamwork that led to the creation of the Blueprint."
CHAI and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) are Collaborating to Advance the Responsible Development and Adoption of AI in the Delivery of Healthcare
NAM's AI Code of Conduct effort is designed to align health, healthcare, and biomedical science around a broadly adopted code of conduct in AI to ensure responsible AI that assures equitable benefit for all. The NAM effort will inform CHAI's future efforts, which will provide robust best-practice technical guidance, including assurance labs and implementation guides to enable clinical systems to apply the Code of Conduct.
CHAI's technical focus will help to inform and clarify areas that will need to be addressed in NAM's Code of Conduct. The work and final deliverables of these projects are mutually reinforcing and coordinated to establish a code of conduct and technical framework for health AI assurance.
"We have a rare window of opportunity in this early phase of AI development and deployment to act in harmony—honoring, reinforcing, and aligning our efforts nationwide to assure responsible AI. The challenge is so formidable and the potential so unprecedented. Nothing less will do," said Laura L. Adams, senior advisor, National Academy of Medicine.
Blueprint Echoes Patient-Centered Policy Approaches by Federal Agencies
The Blueprint builds upon the White House OSTP "Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights" and the "AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0)" from the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology. OSTP acts as a federal observer to CHAI, as do the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, and National Institutes of Health.
"The needs of all patients must be foremost in this effort. In a world with increasing adoption of artificial intelligence for healthcare, we need guidelines and guardrails to ensure ethical, unbiased, appropriate use of the technology. Combating algorithmic bias cannot be done by any one organization, but rather by a diverse group. The Blueprint will follow a patient-centered approach in collaboration with experienced federal agencies, academia, and industry," said Dr. John Halamka, president, Mayo Clinic Platform, and a co-founder of the coalition.
Growing National Health AI Coalition and Community
Launched in the spring of 2022, CHAI's mission is to identify health AI standards and best practices and to provide guidance where needed. It has grown to over 150 organizations across academia, government, healthcare systems, and industry, and includes founding members Change Healthcare, Duke AI Health, Google, Johns Hopkins University, Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, MITRE, SAS, Stanford Medicine, University of California (UC) at Berkeley, and UC San Francisco.
"The CHAI Blueprint is the result of the kind of collaborative approach that's essential for achieving diverse perspectives on issues affecting AI in medicine," said Michael Pencina, Ph.D., a co-founder of the coalition and director of Duke AI Health. "And given our rapidly evolving understanding of the significant impacts of AI on health, health delivery, and equity, the fact that the Blueprint is designed to be a flexible 'living document' will enable us to maintain a continuous focus on these critically important dimensions of algorithmic healthcare."
Public Input Integral to Drafting Process
Over the past 12 months, CHAI held virtual workshops and published papers summarizing coalition presentations, group discussions, and breakout sessions for public input on topics including "Bias, Equity, and Fairness," "Testability, Usability, and Safety," "Transparency," and "Reliability and Monitoring." A first draft of the comprehensive Blueprint was posted for public comment in October 2022 and informed the current implementation guidance.