Corewell Health has taken a unique approach to incorporating artificial intelligence into daily workflows and processes.
"Our underlying philosophy with AI, and honestly this applies to most new technologies, is we want to be what we're calling a 'fast drafter,'" said Jason Joseph, chief digital and information officer at Corewell, during a Becker's virtual event. "We're like NASCAR. You're the drafter, you're right behind the front. You're not the lead car, but you're not in the back of the pack either."
The "fast drafter" philosophy has allowed Corewell to observe and learn from other health systems, as well as take advantage of new opportunities to adopt technology. Corewell has also established an AI Center of Excellence led and coordinated by the system's director of advanced analytics and artificial intelligence. The center includes clinicians, operators, technologists, data scientists and more.
"The group is helping to govern the policy, procedures and approach around responsible and safe use of AI," said Mr. Joseph. "They're not necessarily deciding what we should or shouldn't implement, but really guiding us on opportunities and making sure we have the right guardrails in place."
Corewell's AI Center of Excellence has multiple ongoing projects and technologies in production focused on solving real world problems.
"We're not going to be the leading developer, we're not going to build that from scratch necessarily, but that's our overriding philosophy and so far it's served us really well," said Mr. Joseph. "We're getting some of the bump from AI, we're learning things, but we're not necessarily out there trailblazing and finding new discoveries like some of the academics."
Corewell isn't planning to hire a large team of data scientists to develop AI strategies but is looking to make key investments and partnerships.
"The idea that we can buy technology off the shelf and use it is priority number one, to use the Lego building blocks like large language models and software development techniques to build automation using AI as priority number two," said Mr. Joseph. "You need to have people in an organization like ours who can do that. We're large enough to do that, but we're not going to be on the frontline of research of what's possible."