Microsoft forms health AI governance network

Dive Brief:

• Microsoft is linking up with a number of hospitals to form a health artificial intelligence network with the goal of putting responsible AI guidelines into practice.

• The Trustworthy & Responsible AI Network, or TRAIN, is launching with 16 health system members, including nonprofit behemoth Providence, major Boston-based research institution Mass General Brigham and AdventHealth, a nine-state system headquartered in Florida. It also includes OCHIN, which provides technology to community health organizations, and TruBridge, a health services company that focuses on revenue cycle management.

• Unlike another health AI standards network Microsoft participates in called the Coalition for Health AI, TRAIN does not include any tech giant competitors or representatives of the federal government. Microsoft shared the news during the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas, the largest annual event in the healthcare industry.

Dive Insight:

As the federal government begins to brainstorm a regulatory structure to oversee the use of AI in healthcare, technology giants, AI startups and companies implementing the tech are hustling to show Washington that the industry is policing itself.

TRAIN members will “help improve the quality and trustworthiness of AI” by sharing best practices, registering AI used for clinical care through an online portal, providing tools to measure outcomes from the use of AI and facilitating the development of a national AI outcomes registry, according to a release.

Members will not share proprietary data or AI algorithms with each other or with third parties.

Microsoft is also a member of the Coalition for Health AI, a network of health systems and technology vendors working on their own standards, including a labeling schema to help AI users understand the algorithms’ outputs.

CHAI launched in 2022 and has since grown to 1,300 member organizations, including Google and at least two hospitals that will also participate in TRAIN: Johns Hopkins and Duke Health.

TRAIN plans to build on CHAI’s “best practice guidelines and guardrails to build practical tools that make responsible AI a reality,” Michael Pencina, chief data scientist for Duke Health and CHAI co-founder and board member, said in a statement Monday.

CHAI’s board also includes leaders of the Food and Drug Administration and the Office of the National Coordinator, which oversees U.S. health IT.

Calls have been mounting for the federal government to set standards around the use of AI in healthcare, but Washington has yet to stand up anything concrete. In October, President Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring the HHS to create a task force to create a plan for governing AI in the industry.

Microsoft is viewed as one step ahead of rival tech giant Google in the AI race. In healthcare, the company made early strides into conversational AI with its almost $20 billion acquisition of Nuance in 2022. Nuance develops automatic notetaking for clinicians using AI and is integrated into major electronic health record software.

Microsoft has also partnered with Epic, the country’s largest EHR vendor, on generative AI tools. In October, Microsoft unveiled a slew of new data and AI offerings, including generative AI models meant to lower administrative burden on clinicians.

Also on Monday, Microsoft said Stanford Health Care and WellSpan are adopting an AI-backed clinical notetaking tool from Nuance across their enterprises. The additions bring Nuance’s customer list to more than 200, according to the company.

This story was originally published on Healthcare Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Healthcare Dive newsletter.