Cleveland Clinic’s AI Summit aims to ‘bridge the worlds’ of technology, medicine

Key takeaways:

• All specialists are encouraged to attend.
• Session topics include patient care, diagnostics and AI regulation.
• The summit will focus on the patient and clinical experience, according to the organizers.

Cleveland Clinic’s A.I. Summit for Healthcare Professionals will highlight the latest AI innovations applicable across the health care spectrum, with a unique focus on how AI stands to impact the patient journey and clinical experience.

The meeting will take place July 11 at the InterContinental Hotel in Cleveland, with a livestream available for remote attendees.

Interactive sessions will be held throughout the day with panels centered on AI in different clinical contexts. Additionally, networking sessions will be held the night before and after the conference, according to the organizers.

Healio spoke with Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, chairman of the department of hematology and medical oncology of Cleveland Clinic’s Taussig Cancer Institute, and Scott R. Steele, MD, MBA, FACS, FASCRS, president of the Cleveland Clinic’s main campus — both lead activity directors of the summit — to learn about what clinicians can expect from the event and why they should attend.

AI topics

Both Abraham and Steele described the potential for AI tools to assist in the “journey” across the patient experience, from inpatient to ambulatory settings. The goal of the summit is to share with health care professionals what tools currently exist to improve the patient experience, and which are on the horizon.

This starts with the keynote speaker, David C. Rhew, MD, global chief medical officer of Microsoft, who will give a “big-picture” overview of how AI is revolutionizing health care, which will be followed by concurrent sections that will dive deeper into specific focal points, according to Abraham.

Jame Abraham

“Sessions include outpatient and inpatient experiences, operating rooms, diagnostics, preauthorization changes and medical education,” he said.

Beyond clinical practice, panel discussions will cover questions of AI ethics and success measures. These include the panels “AI Innovation, Ethics and Governance,” (10:20 a.m. EST) with panelists Nikhil Buduma; Giovanni E. Cacciamani, MD, FEBU; Gilles Clermont MD, MSc; Jeremy David; and Michael R. Pinsky, MD, CM, Drhc, FCCP, MCCM, and “AI evaluation – what does success look like?” (2:00 p.m. EST) with panelists Nancy Albert, PhD, CCNS, CCRN, NE-BC, FAHA, FCCM, FHFSA, FAAN; Jianying Hu, PhD; Nelita Iuppa, DNP, RN-BC; Anant Madabhushi, PhD; Susannah Rose, PhD; and Andrea Sikora, PharmD.

All the sessions will aim to answer practical questions for health care professionals about incorporating AI into their practices.

Scott R. Steele

“How do you incorporate AI into hospitals?” Steele said. “What about HIPAA compliance and processes, or the intersection of AI and pharmacy? All these questions need to be asked to ensure we are balancing throughput operations and maximizing a patient’s journey without losing that personal touch.”

Each session aims to explore the strengths and weaknesses offered by AI, according to Steele.

“There’s so much AI can provide to all aspects of the patient journey,” he noted. “But there are also things that AI can’t do right now or doesn’t have a place in. We want to hopefully decrease some misconceptions about AI as well.”

Focus on health care professionals

In addition to the patient experience, Abraham and Steele noted a focus on the clinician experience is at the forefront of the summit. This includes sessions such as “How diagnostic disciplines (imaging and pathology) will change with AI” (11:35 a.m. EST) and “Impact of AI on research” (12:15 p.m. EST).

“Both Dr. Steele and I are clinicians and health care leaders, and we know there is so much to learn about AI,” Abraham said. “We are stepping out of our comfort zone and encouraging our colleagues to do the same to better understand how AI is going to change the clinical setting.”

Steele added that whereas other conferences have focused on the technological aspect of AI, Cleveland Clinic’s summit puts the focus on the clinicians.

“We’re trying to bridge the worlds of AI and medicine with this summit,” he said.

Regardless of a health professional’s specialty or familiarity with AI, Abraham and Steele encourage all to attend the summit to gain an improved understanding of technology.

“Anyone working in the clinical space: doctors, nurses, pharmacists, health care administrators or trainees, can learn from this experience,” Abraham said. “We also have many companies signed up, such as IBM and Palantir.”

Steele also emphasized that clinicians hesitant to use AI shouldn’t shy away from attending.

“I think they are the perfect people to come to this summit,” Steele said. “Whether or not you believe in it or are hesitant of it, AI is the way of the future. We hope that by hearing from experts, lessons from these sessions can be taken back home and applied directly to our patient care.”

The full agenda and session list can be found here. Healio is an official media partner of Cleveland Clinic’s A.I. Summit for Healthcare Professionals. The Healio team will provide coverage from the meeting, including reports on the sessions above and more.

Overall, Abraham stressed the importance of AI education for the future of health care.

“Our thought is that AI is not going to replace the doctors, but if doctors are not willing to learn, they will be replaced,” Abraham added. “It’s going to change the way we live, connect, relate and function on a daily basis, so it’s really up to us to understand.”

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For more information:

Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, can be reached at abrahaj5@ccf.org.

Scott R. Steele, MD, MBA, FACS, FASCRS, can be reached at steeles3@ccf.org.