Fort Worth, Texas-based Cook Children’s Health Care System has gotten nurses comfortable with AI by involving them in the governance process and being transparent about its use.
“Nurses are uncomfortable with the thought of AI because they don’t know what it is,” Charity Darnell, MSN, RN, vice president and chief clinical information officer of Cook Children’s, told Becker’s at the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas. “They’re open to it if they’re not fearful of it.”
Nurses have to be “at the table” for AI governance and development, Ms. Darnell said. “It’s not going to take their job. It’s not going to take care of patients for them,” she said. “They cannot be replaced.”
Too often, healthcare has introduced new technologies saying they are going to save staffers time but then hasn’t followed through on those promises, she said. The industry can’t make the same mistake with AI.
Cook Children’s trains employees on tech at an innovation center that mimics an inpatient unit.
The pediatric health system is building a virtual nursing program with smart hospital company Artisight, outfitting rooms with cameras, mics and speakers. Cook Children’s has allayed nurses’ concerns about employee surveillance by assuring them the cameras aren’t recording, only streaming a live feed.
Cook Children’s is also exploring AI use cases specific to pediatrics, such as detecting when crib rails are up or down or voice changes in a child with autism. Ms. Darnell noted that most healthcare AI platforms are built with adult patients in mind. “Pediatrics is different,” she said.
