Can AI Offer a Path to Health Equity?

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health inequities as systematic differences in the health status or the distribution of health resources between population groups.Social factors such as education, employment status, income level, gender, and ethnicity all play a role in health outcomes. Achieving health equity requires an intentional approach to bridging the gap between different demographics. AI offers the ability to better understand these inequities and ultimately help solve them. This week’s Domain Knowledge highlights AI as a tool for driving health equity.

The American Medical Association recently created a framework for the development and use of AI. The AMA vision outlines the role of AI in the quadruple aim; using AI to enhance patient care, improve population health, improve the work-life of healthcare providers and reduce costs.

Truveta and LexisNexis Risk Solutions are using AI with de-identified data to improve health research and healthcare inequities. This is achieved by linking national clinical data, medical claims data, socioeconomic data, and mortality data through a process that de-identifies each dataset to ensure patient privacy.

Dr. John Sargent recently shared his insights on the role of AI in achieving health equity goals. He discusses how AI contributes to data-driven patient care and more efficient distribution of healthcare resources. Allocating limited resources is one of the more immediately actionable ways AI is helping people. For example, new GI Genius machines (used for colorectal cancer) are being donated to underserved communities identified by AI to get the most patients access to colorectal screenings.

That’s a wrap for this week’s review of news and happenings in the healthcare AI space. In closing, I’ll leave you with an invitation to learn more about the benefits of using an AI Hub to manage multiple applications across your clinical needs and offer you a personal demo of Ferrum’s platform and growing AI catalog.

If you have AI tips, suggestions, or resources you’d like to share leave us a note below, and please feel free to suggest topics you would like to see covered in future posts.