AI Code of Conduct a goal for new committee of National Academy of Medicine

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A new committee will draft best practices for physicians to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into health care.

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) announced it will convene a group to develop an “Artificial Intelligence Code of Conduct” (AICC) to describe the role of AI in health, medical care, and research. AI “is poised for a profound impact throughout the health field,” and physicians and other clinicians need a set of governance standards to develop and apply it.

“The goal is that the Code and national health care AI architecture be widely adopted, translated for implementation by various stakeholders, and continuously improved to realize AI’s enormous promise,” according to NAM.

“Involving these accomplished national leaders from across the U.S. is essential for creation of a harmonized, broadly adopted AI Code of Conduct, as well as for development of the national architecture that promotes the equitable and responsible use of AI,” NAM Executive Officer and Senior Scholar Michael McGinnis, MD, MA, MPP, said in a news release. “This collaborative effort will help ensure that the application of health AI is based on the best science, and is consistent with ethical principles and societal values in pursuit of effectiveness, efficiency, and equity for all members of society.”

The committee will add to related work including the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI), according to NAM. CHAI is a collaborative group of academic, medical, and technological researchers examining AI with several federal agencies. In April, CHAI published its “Blueprint for Trustworthy AI Implementation Guidance and Assurance for Healthcare,” a report on evaluating AI technologies and using them responsibly.

NAM is planning a three-year project to start this summer with an in-person steering committee meeting. Quarterly webinars will follow, ending in winter 2025.

The availability of the program ChatGPT, created by OpenAI, has sparked huge public interest in artificial intelligence and how it will affect medicine and other aspects of work and life.

The NAM committee will address issues of privacy, ethics, equity, accountability, and applicability in at least two forms of AI.

NAM aims to address large language models (LLMs) AI programs that generate answers to user inquiries. ChatGPT is an LLM that gained popularity in part due to its ability to generate human-like textual answers to user questions.

The new AICC also will address predictive AI programs and models that identify patients at risk of developing certain conditions and likely outcomes of treatment plans, according to NAM.

The committee members are:

• Grace Cordovano, BCPA, founder of Enlightening Results
• Andrew Bindman, MD, executive vice president and chief medical officer of Kaiser Permanente
• Jodi Daniel, partner in Crowell & Moring’s Health Care Group
• Wyatt Decker, MD, MBA, CEO of Optum Health
• Peter Embí, MD, MS, professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center
• Gianrico Farrugia, MD, president and CEO of Mayo Clinic
• Kadija Ferryman, PhD, MA, an anthropologist at Johns Hopkins University
• Sanjay Gupta, MD, chief medical correspondent of CNN
• Eric Horvitz, MD, PhD, chief scientific officer of Microsoft
• Roy Jakobs, MBA, MM, CEO of Royal Philips
• Kevin Johnson, MD, MS, University of Pennsylvania
• Kedar Mate, MD, president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement
• Deven McGraw, lead for data stewardship and sharing for Invitae
• Bakul Patel, MBA, MS, senior director for global digital health strategy and regulatory at Google
• Philip R.O. Payne, PhD, associate dean at Washington University School of Medicine
• Vardit Ravitsky, PhD, MA, Hastings Center bioethics research institute
• Suchi Saria, PhD, director of the Machine Learning, AI, and Healthcare Lab at Johns Hopkins University
• Eric Topol, MD, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute
• Selwyn M. Vickers, MD, FACS, president and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
• Peter Lee, corporate vice president of research and incubations at Microsoft Research
• Kenneth D. Mandl, MD, MPH, professor of pediatrics and biomedical informatics at Harvard Medical School