AI’s growing role in healthcare transformation will require a greater focus on the quality and relevance of underlying data, speakers said during a packed keynote session at Digital Health Rewired24.
“Analysis is about asking questions. In order to ask and answer questions, analysts and those who act need a stable data source,” Joanna Peller, Palantir ” the head of healthcare at Palantir Technologies told the audience on Tuesday on the AI, data and analytics stage.
In November, Palantir won the contract to leverage the new NHS federated data platform. Peller noted that the FDP would provide infrastructure for deploying data models, but does not provide the models themselves. “But if the data is bad, it’s bad too, and that’s where organizations need to start looking at its accuracy,” she added.
Peller was joined by Ming Tang, head of data and analytics at NHS England, Bruno Botelho, deputy chief operating officer and director of digital operations and innovation at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Wes Baker , director of strategic analysis, economics and population health management. at Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust.
“You all have a lot of data and you need to get your teams to start thinking about the boring stuff, the timeliness and completeness of the data,” Tang said during the session.
Botelho addressed the audience against the backdrop of a nearly 30-minute video showing a young doctor writing a patient summary, a task that is one of many that Chelsea and Westminster are using AI to speed up.
“We are working with junior doctors on how to leverage this tool and create a space where information is available and pre-populated based on the inpatient population,” he said. “Thanks to LLMs (large language models) or AI, we can consolidate information and make it available to doctors in seconds, with a generated letter allowing the doctor to simply reread, make more concise, rewrite or add information,” he said.
Integrating AI into systems will include ensuring that healthcare staff feel comfortable using it, speakers concluded. This will include avoiding the blame culture that is prevalent in some parts of the health service and accepting risk and failure.
“If mistakes happen, it’s about learning from those mistakes,” Baker said. “Culture will be really important as you integrate AI tools.”
Digital health reimagined will take place at the NEC in Birmingham on March 12-13. The program is available here. You can still register to attend on site in Hall 8 of the NEC.
