CHAI, the Coalition for Health AI, has named Brian S. Anderson, M.D., a CHAI co-founder and chief digital health physician at MITRE, to be its first CEO.
CHAI includes representatives from over 1,300 member organizations including hospital systems, tech companies, government agencies and advocacy groups. It 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.
“I’m so incredibly thankful to MITRE for helping to invest in standing up CHAI and getting us to this point,” Anderson said in a statement. “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.”
The coalition also named members of CHAI’s inaugural board of directors chaired by John Halamka, M.D., a CHAI co-founder and the president of Mayo Clinic Platform, as well as leaders of key advisory boards. The board also opened general membership for individuals and organizations and formalized the process for joining and contributing to CHAI work groups.
CHAI also announced partnerships with the patient advocacy group, the National Health Council, and health standards organization HL7.
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: Troy Tazbaz, director, Digital Health Center of Excellence, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
• Federal Liaison: Micky Tripathi, Ph.D., National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
CHAI has 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.
The advisory boards announced are:
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: Ivor Horn, M.D., M.P.H., chief health equity officer and director, Google
• 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)
Government Advisory Board
• Co-Chair: Troy Tazbaz (member of the Board of Directors)
• Co-Chair: Micky Tripathi (member of the Board of Directors)
• Gil Alterovitz, Ph.D., FACMI, FAMIA, director, National Artificial Intelligence Institute and Chief AI Officer, Veterans Health Administration (federal liaison)
• Jonathan Blum, MPP, principal deputy administrator & chief operating officer, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (federal liaison)
• Susan Coller Monarez, Ph.D., deputy director, Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) (federal liaison)
• Dylan George, Ph.D., director, Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (federal liaison)
• Melanie Fontes Rainer, J.D., director, Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (federal liaison)
• Grail Sipes, assistant director for biomedical regulatory policy, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (federal liaison)
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. 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
