One of VALID AI’s first actions was to issue a call to action across the industry to help make equity considerations a structural part of AI adoption.

The collective is encouraging organizations worldwide to use a screening method called “Social Vital Signs” to identify and evaluate patients’ social determinants of health (SDOH) when delivering care.

Social determinants such as socioeconomic status, language, literacy, neighborhood, employment, social support and care access are crucial in shaping individual health outcomes and risks. But they’re often overlooked, hidden within unstructured notes, or insufficiently captured during patient assessments, VALID AI leaders noted in a February press release outlining the challenge.

They said while evidence has been building on the need for making SDOH available as Social Vital Signs, real-world implementation of the approach has lagged due to technology, data-sharing and policy barriers.

“I’m hoping this challenge and call to action will activate organizations of all sizes to work together, in an open innovation framework, to make Social Vital Signs a reality for all care settings — irrespective of geographic location or practice type,” said Ashish Atreja, CIO and chief digital health officer at UC Davis Health and VALID AI’s founding chair.

VALID AI member organizations will serve as co-hosts in each state to support Gen AI testing environments and workstreams. They, in turn, will assist organizations, researchers, students, patients, and community members to tackle a series of mini challenges that currently prevent the widespread adoption of Social Vital Signs in clinical practice.

The output will be made available as part of a Gen AI “SDOH Toolkit” that aims to:

  • Develop a database of content and standards related to SDOH
  • Create tools to help providers improve clinical documentation to capture SDOH
  • Leverage Gen AI to identify and predict SDOH indicators
  • Create dashboards to allow providers to exchange SDOH data
  • Identify local SDOH gaps and find solutions to address those needs

Organizations and individuals can join in the challenge by visiting VALIDAI.Health.

UC Davis Health a founding member of new Mayo global data network

This April, UC Davis Health became one of eight founding members of Mayo Clinic Platform Connect, a global data-sharing network that aims to drive AI innovation in health care. Other members include Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein (Brazil), the Mayo Clinic, Mercy (St. Louis), Seoul National University Hospital, Sheba Medical Center (Israel), SingHealth, and the University Health Network (Toronto).

Mayo officials said the network now has de-identified clinical data from 32 million patient lives, including “representation from diverse global regions, which is critical to improve accuracy, reduce model bias, and create more diverse, and therefore stronger, treatment recommendations for patients.”

“This network extends the work we are doing to advance the responsible and ethical development of generative AI-powered health care globally,” Atreja said.