Leading Australian research, government and industry representatives have met at Macquarie to develop recommendations on the safe and responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare.

The National AI in Healthcare Policy Workshop was convened by the Australian Alliance for AI in Healthcare (AAAiH), facilitated by Dr Norman Swan AM, and supported by several high-profile groups including the Australian Institute of Health Innovation (AIHI), CSIRO’s Australian e-Health Research Centre, RMIT, the Australasian Institute of Digital Health, and the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre.

Attendees included representatives from the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, as well as federal, state and territory departments of health and representatives from key stakeholder and regulatory bodies.

Professor Enrico Coiera, Director of the Centre for Health Informatics at AIHI and a founding member of AAAiH, says the group is strongly supportive of the government’s active interest in developing industry-appropriate policy and governance for AI.

While Australia regulates AI that is used in medical devices through the Therapeutic Goods Administration, clinicians and consumers need to be aware that any AI that has not gone through rigorous testing is likely not fit for use in patient-facing settings.

Large language models such as ChatGPT are a good example of this, as they have not been certified for use in any aspect of patient care.

“AAAiH is developing policy options to not only assist in dealing with the specific challenges of using AI safely, effectively and securely in healthcare, but also to support companies investing in bringing AI to healthcare settings,” Professor Coiera says.

“A whole-of-system approach will be required from government, industry and research due to the increasing opportunity for AI to be expanded into Australian healthcare settings, bringing with it not only prospects for enormous benefit, but also areas of concern.”

Other key issues are the potential for breaches of privacy, the importance of localisation due to differences across clinical settings, and the need for robust government policy.

The policy recommendations discussed at the workshop will be released later this year. They will build on current healthcare-specific regulatory structures and cover three areas:

• safety, quality, ethics and security governance for healthcare AI
• supporting the development of a healthcare AI industry in Australia
• building the capabilities of the healthcare workforce and consumers to be effective users of AI.

AAAiH is a national community of practice with more than 100 member organisations drawn from industry, health service providers, academia and consumer organisations.