Hastings Center News

Ravitsky Appointed to AI Initiative

The National Academy of Medicine has appointed Hastings Center president-designate Vardit Ravitsky to a new initiative aiming to ensure the safe, ethical, reliable, and equitable use of artificial intelligence in health, medical care, and health research.

Stewarded by the NAM Leadership Consortium, the Health Care Artificial Intelligence Code of Conduct (AICC) will be guided by a steering committee composed of ethics and equity experts, care delivery systems, tech companies, patient advocates, researchers, and payers. The AICC will define the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders throughout the AI lifecycle, covering aspects such as privacy, ethics, equity, accountability, and applicability and serve as a dynamic code subject to testing, validation, and improvement. The aim is to achieve broad adoption of the Code and a national health care AI architecture, with continuous improvement to fully realize the potential benefits of AI in the field.

The initiative responds to the need for standardized guidelines to promote governance interoperability, considering the significant impact AI can have.

“AI could be one of the most transformational technologies in a generation, so it is critical that we have ethical and responsible guidelines to developing and using these powerful new tools,” Ravitsky said.

Ravitsky is a principal investigator on two Bridge2AI research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health. One project is looking at the use of AI to help diagnose and treat diseases such as cancer and depression by analyzing the sound of a patient’s voice. The other project seeks to improve understanding of the relationship between genetics and disease expression.