I want to discuss an issue that I am assiduously attempting to teach Boardrooms right now – the importance of patients in the governance of AI. I have sat in meetings where the plan for executing AI across a large healthcare organization had been fully developed; all the boxes on the extensive org chart ready to go, but not one seat, role, box for patient experience and expertise to be leveraged.
What type of process produces an entire operational structure of such magnitude and patients were nowhere engaged? Only to be informed afterwards. The entire mission and purpose for existing of the organization is to serve patients and yet they did not deem it necessary to include patients in co-creating the future of the organization. But because I was on the board, I could question this. Because I was on the board, I could persist in questioning even when told that “these things are very technical”. Because I was on the board I could insist that the implementation be suspended until patients with the appropriate expertise (of whom I knew several to recommend) had been incorporated.
Ask yourself – What consequential decisions across the healthcare ecosystem could be improved by having a patient in a governance role?
