To spur healthcare AI adoption, policymakers must strike the right balance between enabling innovation and maintaining policy safeguards that protect patients and improve their experience, American Hospital Association President and CEO Rick Pollack wrote.
Here are the AHA’s four priorities to accelerate use of the technology, according to the April 3 article:
1. Synchronize and leverage existing policy frameworks to avoid redundancy. While AI policies need flexibility to keep up with innovation, they should also be coordinated with current healthcare regulations to reduce overlap.
2. Remove regulatory barriers. Some healthcare regulations, including the patchwork of state privacy laws, have indirectly restricted hospitals’ and health systems’ ability to build and implement AI solutions.
3. Ensure the safe and effective use of AI. We recommended policies that keep clinicians involved in decisions around algorithms that affect care access or delivery — such as prior authorization — along with consistent privacy and security requirements for third-party vendors and ongoing oversight standards for healthcare AI developers to maintain their tools’ integrity.
4. Align incentives and address infrastructural factors. Broader use of AI in healthcare hinges on proper incentives and infrastructure to drive readiness and adoption, but reimbursement policies should avoid shifting resources away from other medical services.
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