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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is investing in a new artificial intelligence platform that it hopes will enhance operational applications and analytics in decision-making, while spurring new biomedical research.
WHY IT MATTERS
As announced this past week by vendor C3 AI, HHS will use C3's agentic platform primarily to improve data quality and governance, but also to automate complex, labor-intensive administrative workflows.
The new data foundation will integrate disease-specific National Institutes of Health data into the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid systems and associated state registry datasets.
That means NIH and Medicare and Medicaid claims data will be unified to support research, program integrity and public health analyses, said C3 AI leaders.
The company's CEO, Stephen Ehikian, said the agentic AI platform is designed to unify large, complex systems at a federal scale.
"HHS is taking a major step toward a modern, AI-ready architecture for national health data," Ehikian said.
Fleet Health, a New York-based data science vendor that cites technical and operational expertise from Palantir, MIT, Google and Oxford on its website, said it is collaborating with C3 AI on the zero-trust platform.
THE LARGER TREND
Earlier this year, HHS released an AI Strategic Plan with guidance for healthcare, public health and human services. That plan calls for the agency to accelerate AI innovation to improve the development of medical products, clinical safety and outcomes, and delivery of benefits and also to forecast risks and better respond to public health threats.
On Thursday, the department released a functional strategy to make AI available to its workforce and better integrate AI technologies across operations. HHS said it is inviting all its divisions to collaborate in the development of one department-wide AI infrastructure.
In addition to NIH and CMS, the "OneHHS" approach also includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and others.
"AI is a tool to catalyze progress," Clark Minor, HHS' acting chief AI officer, said in that announcement. "This strategy is about harnessing AI to empower our workforce and drive innovation across the department."
"This is the kind of innovative leadership that will help restore faith in government and improve health outcomes across America," added Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana, a member of the Senate Artificial Intelligence Working Group.
ON THE RECORD
"By providing a secure, transparent and interoperable foundation, we are enabling HHS to accelerate biomedical discovery, strengthen program integrity and improve public health outcomes for millions of Americans," Ehikian said in a statement.
"This effort is designed to deliver research-ready health data that supports critical national programs and population health initiatives," Nabeel Qureshi, Fleet Health's CEO, added.
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
