The use of AI in healthcare is rapidly growing, but physicians are often left out of the conversation about how these technologies should be implemented effectively.
That’s why the American Medical Association (AMA) introduced its new Center for Digital Health and AI on Monday during the HLTH conference in Las Vegas. It aims to educate and support clinicians in adopting AI and other technologies.
“Everyone is talking about digital health and AI, but I don’t see us having the right conversations. Too often, we have technology, then we’re trying to find a problem to solve, and we really have to change that. … We need the leadership of physicians, and that’s where the AMA comes into play,” said John Whyte, MD, MPH, CEO and executive vice president of the AMA, during an interview at the conference.
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The Center has four key priorities:
- Policy and regulatory leadership: The AMA will collaborate with policymakers to determine guidelines on how to use AI and digital tools in healthcare safely and effectively. The AMA wants to work with the Trump administration to determine what the right amount of regulation is for AI.
“Too much regulation prevents innovation, and too little regulation creates a wild west,” Whyte said.
- Clinical workflow integration: The Center will determine ways for physicians to integrate digital tools into their clinical workflows to improve the patient and clinician experience. One of the barriers to this is that AI tools don’t understand how physicians work, according to Whyte. Many tech companies promote AI as a way to help physicians see more patients, but that’s not what doctors actually want, Whyte said. What clinicians really seek is having more time with each patient, not increasing their patient load.
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- Education and training: The Center will help physicians and health systems understand how to use AI both efficiently and effectively in their practice. Areas the AMA will educate physicians on are how these tools are developed, how to minimize bias and what to do if they identify a problem.
- Collaboration: The AMA will work with the healthcare ecosystem to advance AI in healthcare. This includes tech companies, payers, researchers, the government and others. With payers, specifically, it’s important to determine how these AI tools can be paid for.
Research from the AMA shows that physicians are enthusiastic about adopting AI. About two-thirds of physicians have used AI tools in some way in their practice. However, about a quarter of physicians are still concerned about the use of AI due to issues with data privacy and safety.
Ultimately, in launching the Center for Digital Health and AI, the AMA hopes to better understand the digital health landscape a few years down the line, Whyte said.
“I think it’d be great to have more insights into how consumers and patients are involved in this, particularly around the use of wearables,” he said. “As more and more technology is able to be deployed outside the healthcare system in the home, how do we still have that process where physicians are engaged? I think we want to play a key role in generative AI and agentic AI and have a strategic plan around how we are going to improve patient care.”
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