AI in Medicine – AMA Establishes New Principles for AI use
AI in Medicine – AMA Establishes New Principles for AI use
The American Medical Association has issued seven principles to support the development of equitable and responsible healthcare AI.
– The American Medical Association (AMA) issued new principles to guide the development, deployment and use of augmented intelligence (AI) in healthcare, according to a press release shared with HealthITAnalytics.
The principles are designed to build upon existing policy on AI and bolster efforts to establish a governance structure for these technologies as they continue to advance.
The seven principles include:
- Oversight: The AMA supports a whole-of-government approach to implementing governance policies addressing risks associated with healthcare AI.
- Transparency: The AMA advocates for legal mandates detailing key characteristics and information in the design, development and deployment processes of AI, including addressing potential sources of inequity.
- Disclosure and documentation: The principles call for adequate disclosure and documentation when AI directly affects patient care, access, medical decision-making, communications or medical records.
- Generative AI: To manage risks associated with generative AI, the AMA urges healthcare organizations to develop and adopt policies addressing potential negative impacts before its adoption and use.
- Privacy and security: Under these principles, AI developers are urged to design systems with privacy in mind, and organizations must implement safeguards to ensure responsible handling of personal information.
- Bias mitigation: The AMA said it advocates for proactive identification and mitigation of bias in AI algorithms to promote a fair, inclusive and discrimination-free healthcare system.
- Liability: AMA said it will continue to advocate for limitations on physician liability related to the use of AI-enabled technologies, aligning with existing legal approaches to medical liability.
The principles also seek to address the responsible use of AI by payers for activities like benefit design, claim determinations, and coverage limit determinations. The press release states that the AMA is in favor of stronger regulatory oversight when payers use AI for these purposes.
Specifically, the AMA asserts that these technologies should not systematically withhold care from certain groups or reduce access to necessary care. Further, the press release notes that when payers are utilizing AI tools, efforts to ensure that these systems don’t eliminate human review of individual circumstances or override clinical judgment.
“The AMA recognizes the immense potential of health care AI in enhancing diagnostic accuracy, treatment outcomes, and patient care,” said AMA President Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH, in the press release. “However, this transformative power comes with ethical considerations and potential risks that demand a proactive and principled approach to the oversight and governance of health care AI. The new AMA principles will guide the organization’s engagement with the administration, Congress and industry stakeholders in discussions on the future of governance policies to regulate the development, deployment and use of health care AI.”
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