In yesterday’s Tech Talks interview with David Savage, we discussed the fundamental purpose of AI in healthcare: it must serve people. As Chief AI Officer at Velatura, my focus is on applying AI and machine learning on top of governed and trustworthy data to improve patient empowerment and increase provider satisfaction. Here’s the episode on Spotify for your listening please – I’d love to hear your feedback: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7GFJxu7GZRfnTabpNQY9if?si=TIA-n_F0QWOOzLjNDOCj0g
As readers of this newsletter know, I’m passionate about is moving beyond “Personalized AI” to “Personal AI”. This isn’t just AI designed for you, but AI that you create, you control, you share, and that meets your specific purposes. This is incredibly important in healthcare because we are all so individual, allowing someone to truly take ownership of their health and their data.
AI plays a vital role in bridging population health (broad data sets) and personalized medicine (narrow, deep data), making the development of solutions more cost-effective. While AI has been around, the current motivation for roles like mine reflects the need to apply these tools responsibly in a regulated industry like healthcare, balancing efficiency with safety. Putting data to work requires guardrails, curation, and determining fit for purpose.
If you are interested in my US Congressional testimony on this topic, please check out here: https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116823/witnesses/HHRG-118-VR03-Wstate-NatarajanP-20240215.pdf
Velatura’s position as America’s largest multi-jurisdictional health information exchange, operating in over 10 states and managing billions of governed, trustworthy health records, combined with our trusted networks and human trust, allows us to put out AI products that people will actually use. This is key – change is easy, but making it sticky enough to measure outcomes requires foresight.
We are actively moving beyond experimentation into broader implementation. This involves partnership and collaborationwith foundational model companies to take these powerful platforms closer to the patient, clinician, and administrator.
Our new AI product, Consent Manager+, built on platforms like Docusign, is an example of creating additive value through collaboration. Internally, our “Humans and AI First” initiative has shown spectacular success, with multi-hundred percent fold improvements in engagement, happiness with task completion, and productivity by deploying cutting-edge internal AI tools. This internal experience gives us significant confidence in taking these capabilities outwards.
A key factor in adoption is recognizing who the “makers” are. Generative AI has democratized the language of computing and data querying – today, it’s English. This means people in business and operations, who use natural language every day, are uniquely positioned to use these tools. Adoption through “carrots” like making people happier has been key.
I believe we have a responsibility to society to make conversations about AI real, moving beyond fear or ridiculous hype. There are important topics we don’t discuss enough, like Personal AI vs. Personalized AI and why patients often benefit the least from their own data despite its value. The emergence of generative AI tools allowing patients and physicians to interact directly with charts is a crucial shift.
It’s a complex but exciting time, demanding trust, thoughtful implementation, and a constant focus on the human element.
What are your thoughts on “Personal AI” and the patient’s role in controlling their health data?