Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) Names Board of Directors and CEO

CHAI™ General Membership, Advisory Boards and Working Groups Target Broad Participation Across U.S. Healthcare System and Communities

Washington, DC – March 4, 2024 – Today CHAI, the Coalition for Health AI, announced Dr. Brian S. Anderson, a CHAI co-founder and chief digital health physician at MITRE, to be its first CEO. It also named members of CHAI’s inaugural Board of Directors chaired by Dr. John Halamka, a CHAI co-founder and the president of Mayo Clinic Platform, as well as leaders of key advisory boards. CHAI includes representatives from over 1300 member organizations including hospital systems, tech, government agencies and advocacy groups. The board also opened general membership for individuals and organizations and formalized the process for joining and contributing to CHAI work groups.

AI capabilities show great promise for providing value to healthcare professionals, organizations, and patients. CHAI aspires to contribute to best practices with the testing, deployment, and evaluation of AI systems. This work will engage many stakeholders, promoting discovery and experimentation, and sharing AI innovations in healthcare, including methods that leverage traditional machine learning and more recent developments in generative AI.

CHAI today also announced partnerships with the patient advocacy group, the National Health Council, and health standards organization, HL7. The announcements will be discussed in more detail at a CHAI webinar open to the public on Tuesday, March 5th (register here

). The event will feature opening remarks by FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf.

The CHAI Board of Directors includes:

Chair: John Halamka, M.D., M.S., president, Mayo Clinic Platform
Secretary and Treasurer: Michael Pencina, Ph.D., chief data scientist, Duke Health; professor of biostatistics & bioinformatics and director of Duke AI Health, Duke University
Suchi Saria, Ph.D., endowed chair & AI professor, Johns Hopkins; founder & president, Bayesian Health; advisor, National Academy of Medicine AI Code of Conduct
Nigam Shah, MBBS, Ph.D., chief data scientist, Stanford Health Care; professor of medicine and biomedical data science, Stanford University School of Medicine
Eric Horvitz, M.D., Ph.D., chief scientific officer, Microsoft; member, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST)
Morgan Cheatham, vice president, Bessemer Venture Partners; medical trainee, Brown University
Jennifer Goldsack, chief executive officer, Digital Medicine Society (DiMe)
Federal Liaison (Non-Voting Member): Troy Tazbaz, director, Digital Health Center of Excellence, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Federal Liaison (Non-Voting Member): Micky Tripathi, Ph.D., National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Advisory Boards

In achieving its goal to “develop guidelines and guardrails to drive high-quality healthcare by promoting the adoption of credible, fair and transparent health AI systems” CHAI is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in every aspect of our work. To implement this commitment, CHAI established a governance structure extending beyond the Board of Directors to include a small number of strategically defined advisory boards. Each has a specific remit, a direct line of communication with both the Board and CHAI executives, and is chaired by experts representing the diversity of experience necessary to ensure that health AI tools meet the needs of all people.

CHAI advisory boards will ensure an inclusive and diverse set of voices and perspectives and guide the CHAI Board of Directors as they set priorities and provide accessibility, representation and efficacy of its work in service to all.

Today CHAI announced:

Health System & Provider Advisory Board

Co-Chair: Kameron Matthews, M.D., J.D., FAAFP, chief health officer, Cityblock Health
Co-Chair: Cora Han, J.D., chief health data officer, University of California Health, University of California Office of the President

Patient & Community Advocacy Advisory Board

Co-Chair: Garth Graham, Director and Global Head Healthcare and Public Health Google / YouTube
Co-Chair: Jennifer Goldsack (member of the Board of Directors)

Industry Advisory Board

Co-Chair: Aashima Gupta, global director, Healthcare Strategy and Solutions, Google Cloud
Co-Chair: Eric Horvitz (member of the Board of Directors)

Start-up Advisory Board Chair

Morgan Cheatham (member of the Board of Directors)

Working Groups

As a coalition, CHAI has established diverse working groups focusing on technical specifications and standards for privacy and security, fairness, transparency, usefulness and safety of AI algorithms. Workgroup members agree to a shared commitment to adopt, implement and improve these standards over time. CHAI is actively soliciting participation in the working groups to facilitate shared discovery and consensus building among diverse stakeholders.

The first working group will establish metrics to test and evaluate generative AI tools for healthcare. The Generative AI Test and Evaluation Framework Working Group will be led by:

Zachary Lipton, Ph.D., chief technology officer and chief scientist, Abridge; associate professor, machine learning, Carnegie Mellon University
Karandeep Singh, M.D., , chief health AI officer, University of California San Diego Health

Membership

CHAI membership is currently available to all who are interested. Please visit our website for more information. Later this year CHAI will incorporate membership dues for access to an annual AI conference, CHAI-developed educational resources, publications, policy updates and access to the quality assurance lab guide and registry. Tiered membership will be available to organizations based on non-profit/for-profit status and to ensure accessibility by organizations of all types and sizes.

National Health Council Partnership

CHAI also announced a partnership with the National Health Council (NHC)

which provides a voice for 160 million people living with chronic disease and disabilities and their family caregivers. The partnership was created to further ensure the patient voice is at the center of CHAI’s work on Healthcare AI standards. This will include an NHC “call to action” for its network to be a part of all CHAI working groups, joint workshops and listening sessions where NHC members and partners can contribute valuable viewpoints to CHAI work products.

“The NHC’s partnership with CHAI is critically important to ensuring the patient is at the center of how we design and deploy AI in healthcare,” said Randall L. Rutta, CEO of the NHC. “AI has enormous potential to make quality healthcare more accessible and affordable, but it must also be responsible and trusted. We encourage our members to engage in CHAI and be heard in this process of learning and informing our way forward with AI.”

HL7 Partnership

CHAI also announced a partnership with HL7, the global authority on the interoperability of health information technology. CHAI will leverage testing capabilities, educational resources and standards impacting AI in healthcare.

CHAI Webinar Tuesday, March 5th, 11:30 am – 1:00 pm EST

Keynote – Perspectives from the FDA – Robert M. Califf, M.D., Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Keynote – Elevating Patient and Community Voices – Jennifer Goldsack, CEO, Digital Medicine Society
Introductory Remarks from the CEO and Board of Directors
Moderated Q&A

Founder, CEO and Board Member Quotes

“AI is transforming the practice of medicine in ways that seemed unimaginable just two years ago. CHAI will bring together policymakers, technologists, healthcare providers, health plans, and a range of stakeholder advocates to develop guidelines and frameworks for evaluating AI. We have a shared mission to empower clinicians and patients with AI tools that maximize benefit and minimize harm.” – Dr. John Halamka, co-founder and board chair

“It is clear that in order to achieve that mission, we need to look beyond just the AI models and analyze the care workflows in which the models embed, the characteristics of the population we attempt to benefit with AI as well as the social and cultural milieu in which the use occurs.” – Dr. Nigam Shah, co-founder and board member

“The potential of AI in healthcare is extraordinary. The Coalition for Health AI was established to bring together diverse stakeholders for discovery, learning, and the sharing of best practices, with a focus on the responsible development and fielding of the technologies. Our united mission is to accelerate the journey from promising AI innovations into transformative benefits in the real world of healthcare and healing.” – Dr. Eric Horvitz, co-founder and board member

“I’ve spent the last decade building and deploying AI products. A lot of energy needs to go into verifying a product’s performance before it is deployed and then it must be monitored. Best practices to ensure AI’s accuracy and safety are not obvious to non-experts. Given the explosion of AI developers and the rapid pace of AI research, we need a way to ensure best practices are both clear and being followed. CHAI was created to address this gap in healthcare.” – Suchi Saria, co-founder and board member

“I’m so incredibly thankful to MITRE for helping to invest in standing up CHAI and getting us to this point. CHAI will contribute to operationalizing the safe, equitable and trustworthy deployment of AI across the U.S. health system—an ambitious approach at a critical time. We are partnering with healthcare practitioners, patients, government, tech leaders, startups and other stakeholders across the industry to develop an ecosystem built on curiosity and open-mindedness. Together, we will develop agreed-upon practices and the ability to evaluate AI systems for healthcare.” – Dr. Brian Anderson, CEO

“We are at a precipice of unprecedented changes to healthcare that AI will bring. It is more important than ever to develop the right frameworks for trustworthy health AI that put the human person on top of the hierarchy to make sure the technology offers service and benefit to all. I am excited to be a part of the Coalition for Health AI to help create a future where responsible AI practices are the cornerstone.” Michael Pencina, board member

“Decades of research have brought us to a transformative moment for AI and the applications in medicine are unbounded. CHAI is dedicated to meeting urgent concerns pertaining to safe, fair, and effective use of AI in healthcare. Through interdisciplinary collaborations, we will create accessible frameworks and tools to best support responsible innovation.” – Morgan Cheatham, board member

About CHAI

The CHAI (Coalition for Health AI) mission is to be the trusted source of Responsible AI in Health that serves all. It aims to ensure high-quality care, foster trust among users, and meet the growing healthcare needs. As a coalition bringing together leaders and experts representing health systems, startups, government and patient advocates, CHAI has established diverse working groups focusing on privacy & security, fairness, transparency, usefulness, and safety of AI algorithms.

In April, the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI™) released its “Blueprint for Trustworthy AI Implementation Guidance and Assurance for Healthcare”. In December 2023, CHAI published its proposal for “A Nationwide Network of Health AI Assurance Laboratories”

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