[author: Marti Arvin*]
Compliance Today (December 2024)
Artificial intelligence or AI—yes, we are talking about it again. The explosion of AI in healthcare will only continue to grow. Statistics show that the total market value of AI in healthcare will expand to over $148 billion by 2029.[1] AI is expected to help reduce healthcare costs by $13 billion by 2025. AI is predicted to save $16 billion related to medication dosing errors. It is estimated that AI has reduced physician administrative time by 20%. An anticipated growth of precision medicine associated with AI is $14.5 billion by 2030. AI use in clinical imaging is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 26.5% through 2028. In 2024, it has been estimated that approximately 12.4% of healthcare organizations use AI.
So, how does a compliance professional stay on top of the privacy concerns around the ever-expanding use of AI? One approach is to tie it into existing data governance processes (or establish a data governance process). The goal is to have a method for identifying any AI use in the organization. The data governance process should have an oversight committee that helps make decisions regarding what AI the organization will use. Given the variety of AI tools that exist, the organization must understand the uses and vetting process.
AI tools create a multitude of compliance and privacy risks. For example, if a provider downloads a tool to use on a personal device to support patient care, there will likely be data ownership, storage, and privacy issues.
Without a strong data governance process, using AI in an organization can quickly become unwieldy. The organization may end up with multiple tools that do similar things with little control over their use and data storage submitted to and created by them. This could also create violations of HIPAA if an appropriate assessment of the tool or solution is not conducted, and a business associate agreement is not entered when necessary.
Compliance and privacy professionals should be very aware of the AI solutions being used by their organizations. They should be an integral part of the data governance process. If that is not true today, the compliance or privacy professional should make it so soon.
*Marti Arvin is the Senior Vice President, Chief Compliance and Privacy Officer at Erlanger Health System in Chattanooga, TN.
1 Dave Andre, “19+ AI in Healthcare Statistics for 2024,” allaboutai.com, November 6, 2024, https://www.allaboutai.com/resources/ai-statistics/healthcare/.
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