Tacoma, Wash.-based MultiCare Health System employs a targeted strategy for AI investments, its innovation chief told Becker's.
"We see AI as a technology coming at us in 1,000 different ways," said MultiCare Chief Innovation Officer Jason Parks. "A lot of that is nails walking around looking for hammers, if you will."
While AI is a big part of the 13-hospital system's innovation agenda, MultiCare takes the opposite of a "shotgun approach," Mr. Parks said. Thus, the system's recent strategic investment in AI charting startup Layer Health.
MultiCare Capital Partners, the health system's venture capital arm, participated in a seed funding round for the company, which is developing its first platform to automate quality measure reporting for clinical registries. Layer Health stood out because it concentrates on the clinical side and has clarity in what it's trying to do, Mr. Parks said.
"For a while, everybody was a pop health company. Now everybody's an AI company," he said. "That makes sense as trends occur in the industry. But we see a lot of opportunity for focus in AI use cases."
Layer Health's other investors include Inception Health, the strategic investment arm of Milwaukee-based Froedtert Health, and GV (Google Ventures) and General Catalyst. The startup spun out of Cambridge-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mr. Parks said he views AI as less of a technology issue, instead focusing on how it affects people, culture and workflows. So any investment must add value to those three things at MultiCare.