With an increase of AI technology in the healthcare industry, clinicians struggle to keep up with the rapidly growing field. Mass General Brigham’s AI Challenge seeks to give professionals the opportunity to assess new technologies in a collaborative, immersive experience.
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Healthcare Professionals Take AI Technology for a Spin

By Fay Harvey  

BOSTON — Mass General Brigham Artificial Intelligence (AI), a collective of the healthcare system’s physicians who use machine learning to improve healthcare, is hosting a first-of-its-kind Healthcare AI Challenge aiming to evaluate technologic solutions in medicine. 

The event allows healthcare professionals to explore and discuss the latest, rapidly growing AI healthcare technology in a virtual environment with a real-world feel. Participating healthcare professionals — including those from institutions like Emory Healthcare, the University of Washington Radiology Department, University of Wisconsin Radiology Department and the American College of Radiology — will be given access to recent AI solutions to use in simulated medical environments. Participants will then assess the various technologies on their effectiveness. 

“The Healthcare AI Challenge is a collective response to the complexities involved in advancing the responsible development and use of AI in healthcare,” said Keith Dreyer, chief data science officer at Mass General Brigham, in a statement to the organization’s site. “This new approach strives to put clinicians in the driver’s seat, allowing them to evaluate the utility of different AI technologies and ultimately, determine which solutions have the greatest promise to advance patient care.” 

Participants will choose from an array of topics, such as medical imaging interpretation, to test technology in a series of challenges. The tasks on image interpretation, for example, include questions focused on draft report generation, key findings, differential diagnosis, among others, according to a statement from Mass General Brigham’s website.  

The results from the technology trials will enhance analytical rankings and insights into AI solutions, offering healthcare stakeholders and communities transparent feedback on modern systems. AI developers will also gain value by observing how healthcare professionals utilize AI tools in care delivery, paving the way for stronger collaboration between the AI industry and the healthcare sector. 

“We are facing an overwhelming influx of FDA-approved AI tools in healthcare, especially in radiology,” said Dushyant Sahani, MD, chair and professor of the department of radiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, in a statement. “Forming an academic collaborative could play a crucial role in validating and selecting these tools, ensuring they adhere to the highest standards of efficacy and safety.”       

According to Mass General Brigham, the AI Challenge runs on a robust and diverse data-rich environment representative of the founding academic members, and the organization will continue to add new AI solutions, data sets, events, domain experts and specialties to the interactive environments that touch on pathology, genomics, waveform, as well as public and specialized text-based foundation models. 

The results of the Healthcare AI Challenge can be followed at HealthcareAIChallenge.org.