Kick off Meeting HDI Council 2024

In the introduction for the first council members meeting of the Healthcare Data Innovation Council’s 2024 edition, Stefano Sedola (co-founder of the Council) emphasized the increasing regional and national efforts to embrace AI and data strategies in healthcare, facilitated by regulations such as the AI Act, the European Health Data Space, the Data Act, and the Data Governance Act. The Council serves as a platform for discussing European trends and fostering interaction among diverse stakeholders, as well as challenges presented by upcoming regulations. The Council aims to reposition itself as a critical forum for discussing ethical issues, safety concerns, the value of AI and technology innovations, necessary investments for long-term implementation, and their impact on healthcare.

Sara Di Fabio (coordinator of the Council) reviewed the Council’s progress from its inception in 2022, highlighting its evolution and community expansion. The Council focuses on demystifying regulations, sharing insights from real-world applications, and promoting data-driven healthcare approaches. It emphasizes the secondary use of data, accelerating harmonization, and improving AI and analytics usage. The 2024 edition introduces a new governance structure to enhance participation and sustainability. It includes a decision-making board, council members, secretaries, localized ambassadors, and an external advisory board to guide the industry’s global direction.

Initially centred on integrating AI for personalized, preventive, and predictive medicine, the Council’s thematic has evolved to address how new regulations influence AI application in healthcare, aiming to establish a secure framework for health data that could boost medical research.

The council members raised several relevant topics during the meeting:

• Concerns about the accuracy of AI systems, such as large language models like GPT-4 and the necessity of customizing these models to meet healthcare standards;
• Ethical considerations, including the implications of AI potentially surpassing human doctors in certain tasks, and the societal impact of such a shift. There’s a strong focus on demystifying AI’s capabilities and limitations, ensuring AI applications are relevant and safe;
• Challenges of implementing AI in healthcare settings, especially in public health services that may not be adequately prepared for high-tech integrations. The need for ongoing education and adaptation within the healthcare sector was also underlined;
• Complexity of estimating the value of AI applications in healthcare and the lack of clear financing mechanisms;
• Need to demonstrate how AI and gen AI are being deployed and implemented in local, regional or national settings to go beyond research and theory and see how it could work in a real world scenario.

Finally, the activities for 2024 were presented including the two webinars for Italy and Spain, aiming to delve deeper into how AI can be tailored to meet specific national healthcare needs and regulations, the interviews to be conducted to collect stories and use case on AI and data usage in healthcare, the second council meeting to be held on May 21^st, and the final hybrid event of the Council planned for September 2024.