Organizations Must Recognize that AI Capabilities Lack Humanity — Lifepoint Health CDAO

(US & Canada) Chris Hutchins, SVP, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, Lifepoint Health, speaks with Todd Foley, CISO, Lydonia, in a video interview about dealing with analytical bias, the necessity of human interaction with technological capabilities, and being accountable for setting proper mechanisms enabling visibility and simplifying processes for patients.

Lifepoint Health brings essential healthcare services to growing regions, rural communities, and small towns across the U.S.

When it comes to dealing with analytical bias, Hutchins says that Lifepoint Health is in the early stages of exploring use cases in this regard. Explaining further, he says the organization is doing this intentionally because one of the major limitations that AI or any technology cannot fix is the inability to address what one does not know.

Also, it remains an enduring challenge to determine the relevance or importance of the unknown. For instance, Hutchins says, when the U.S. public first learned about stealth technology, it had already been in use for 30 years.

This brings to light two things about bias — being purposefully ignorant about certain things and believing that things are a certain way without investigating further, says Hutchins. In healthcare, this aspect of the knowledge gap becomes more frightening, especially with the constant evolution and discovery of new illnesses.

Taking COVID-19 as an example, Hutchins states that early on, the organization relied on limited observations from a handful of clinicians to identify symptoms and patterns. But when they started, the virus resembled many other things. He remarks that if it was assumed that the models were accurate, they would have missed critical things, leading to worse consequences.

To address such risks, Hutchins maintains that it is critical to keep the minds open to any probability of problem areas. He considers the scenario of missing information as the worst because it is easier to suppress information and create false information knowing that it is damaging.

Moving forward, Hutchins states that imaging is an area with significant potential, but one must proceed with caution. For instance, he mentions seeing a presentation from a pharma company that used imaging to identify COVID, but the challenge was that it appeared similar to other conditions, thereby failing to achieve the desired accuracy rate.

Underscoring the importance of augmentation, Hutchins states that ensuring human interaction with technological capabilities is integral. Organizations must recognize that their capabilities lack humanity, sensitivity, and understanding of human emotions.

Therefore, these tools can be leveraged to augment what a caregiver provider has at the point of care, says Hutchins. However, he notes that staying focused with this approach will bring significant strides, but arrogance can develop the risk of overlooking critical factors.

Delving further, Hutchins says that Lifepoint is moving at a slow pace deliberately, but these systems need to be built into the technology to enable detection capabilities. This also highlights the accountability the organization has towards the patients, communities, and providers to ensure the mechanisms are in place that offer visibility. Additionally, Hutchins affirms not making human nature default as quick and easy solutions are desired, but this is no fast food. He feels fortunate to have an incredible team that focuses on addressing tasks that should not burden the clinical teams. However, one key area that needs tackling is simplification of the processes for patients to understand their options, make decisions, and give consent.

There is a persistent challenge here, as the patient and provider have a trust-based relationship, says Hutchins. The goal is to make the processes straightforward by providing simple yet effective tools to clinicians and support staff.

These are the challenges that CDOs, IT teams, project managers, legal, risk, and compliance face, says Hutchins. Taking care of these challenges includes handling complexities, performing due diligence, and finding ways to say “yes” to initiatives that improve the provider-patient relationship.

In conclusion, he highlights the outstanding collaboration of the legal, HR, risk and compliance, and information security teams, stating that they are committed to thorough evaluations and move at an impressive pace compared to other organizations.

CDO Magazine appreciates Chris Hutchins for sharing his insights with our global community.