Cleveland Clinic CEO says AI can ‘democratize’ access to care | HLTH 2024

Las Vegas - Tom Mihaljevic, MD, president and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, suggests there are two ways to look at the hype surrounding AI in healthcare.

Tom Mihaljevic, MD, president and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, spoke about AI and healthcare at the HLTH Conference.

In the short-term, AI in healthcare may be overhyped, he conceded.

“In the long-term, it’s under-hyped,” he said.

Mihaljevic talked about AI in healthcare in a conversation at the HLTH conference Monday. He fielded questions from Akshay Syal, MD, an instructor of medicine at UCLA Health and a reporter on health issues for NBC News.

Looking globally, Mihaljevic said the biggest problem everywhere is the “availability of highly, highly competent healthcare to all patients.” And that’s where AI holds promise, he said.

“I do believe that AI is going to help us democratize access to high quality care for as many people as possible,” Mihaljevic said.

Right now, Mihaljevic says there are few applications that “are really relevant for patient care.” But he sees more in development, which is promising.

“The enthusiasm for the application of AI in healthcare is appropriately high,” he said.

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Focusing on patients and clinicians

At the Cleveland Clinic, Mihaljevic said the system is focusing on using AI in ways that are relevant to the patient experience.

As Mihaljevic said, “How can we make their experiences with healthcare better? How can we improve the care delivery for patients in a significant way using AI?”

Mihaljevic said he’s also focused on utilizing AP applications that are relevant for caregivers, to make their jobs more manageable. He pointed to AI-powered scribes as a time-saver for clinicians.

“We’re really aspiring to make their lives better,” he said.

He also said another bucket of applications for AI is particularly relevant for large healthcare enterprises, saying, “Those are the applications that help essentially run hospital operations more effectively and more efficiently.”

Mihaljevic spoke enthusiastically about AI technology that can answer questions from patients. He acknowledged that there was some resistance from providers, who were worried that the AI-generated responses would lack empathy.

But Mihaljevic said that patients have responded positively to those AI tools, acknowledging it took some by surprise.

“Our patients told us that AI-powered responses were more empathetic, they were kinder, more comprehensive, and obviously they were timely,” Mihaljevic said. “So, I think the experience has been really, really encouraging, so we're just looking to more and more applications that are going to help us communicate with our patients.”

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Value of partnerships

Mihaljevic also touted the value of partnerships in AI solutions. He pointed to the Cleveland Clinic’s partnership with Palantir as a success story.

Working with Palantir, Cleveland Clinic developed an AI-driven tool called the Virtual Command Center, which offers more visibility in bed availability, the scheduling of surgeries and staffing. The partnership has enabled Cleveland Clinic to coordinate care and manage resources more effectively.

“Palantir has helped us tremendously improve the efficiency and an ability to run our hospital operations better,” Mihaljevic said, adding, “We were able to aggregate and give actionable information to our caregivers that made hospital operations smoother and better.”

Mihaljevic said that health systems should look to tech partners to develop AI solutions rather than going it alone.

“Historically, we used to fall in the trap of saying, ‘Oh, no, we can actually develop all of this internally,’” Mihaljevic said. “Consequently, we failed to develop anything, anything that really was impactful.”

Now, Cleveland Clinic is collaborating with other large companies, including Palantir, IBM and Microsoft.

“The key to success is to have a fruitful collaboration,” Mihaljevic said.

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‘Making good progress’

The Cleveland Clinic has been working heavily with AI for several years, Mihaljevic said. He acknowledged that he wants to see more progress.

“You're never as far as long as you'd like to be, and I'm not ashamed to admit that,” he said. “But I think, on a relative basis, I think we're making good progress, but there is this kind of a healthy anxiousness to try to pull faster.”

Developing AI solutions for clinical uses is riskier, because, as he said, “There’s a lot to lose if we do it wrongly.”

The Cleveland Clinic is putting robust efforts into using AI to improve the system’s operations, with the goal of reducing administrative costs.

“It we are really looking at a really effective, low-risk way to reduce the cost of U.S. healthcare without adversely affecting experience and availability, it would be in the arena of the reduction of administrative costs,” Mihaljevic said.

Even with his obvious enthusiasm for AI, Mihaljevic said it’s important to view the technology realistically.

“Often people view AI as digital solutions … as a magic dust that we’ll sprinkle onto our organization, and tomorrow, everything is going to be perfect, just because we had a new solution for something,” he said.

“I think the truth is that we really have to prepare the seeds of AI to grow in an effective way, but by also creating a good organizational framework for AI solutions,” he added. “Technology alone will not change the way that we provide healthcare.”