On May 2, clinicians, legal experts, strategists, entrepreneurs, and tech-based organizations gathered at Bryant University for the third annual Healthcare Summit. Convening under the theme “Transforming Healthcare Through AI: Innovation, Ethics, and Impact,” attendees explored how professionals could leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and work across sectors to find solutions that addressed the healthcare system’s needs.
Welcoming guests to this year’s summit, Bryant’s School of Health and Behavioral Sciences Director Kirsten Hokeness, Ph.D., highlighted that the nation’s primary care and behavioral health systems are under immense pressure.
“We are, without question, at a critical tipping point, if not already beyond it,” said Hokeness.
Bryant University President Ross Gittell, Ph.D., added that AI is reshaping how care is delivered, how health systems are managed, and how the next generation of healthcare professionals is trained.
“AI holds promise to make healthcare more efficient, more personalized, and more equitable. But along with that promise comes a responsibility to implement these technologies with close attention to their real-world impact,” said Gittell.
Kicking off the morning session in the university’s Heidi and Walter Stepan Grand Hall, Hokeness brought Geeta Nayyar, MD, MBA, to the stage to discuss key challenges and opportunities for healthcare and AI. Nayyar, a globally recognized chief medical officer, technologist, and author who helps leaders leverage a human approach to innovation, highlighted the importance of partnerships and patient-physician relationships.
“We have to understand the context in which we're innovating because the whole purpose of innovating is to solve our challenges and opportunities, not to build stuff just because we can,” she said.
Nayyar shared that healthcare innovations should include healthcare personnels’ perspectives since some innovations have been implemented for them, rather than alongside them. Per relationships, Nayyar added that when it comes to healthcare, 93 percent of all consumers trust their doctor. When those same consumers are asked about their trust in health institutions’ quality of care, that number drops to 53 percent.
“What that tells us is the consumer understands, in a post-pandemic world, that the healthcare system and institutions are not set up for their success and not set up for their doctor's success,” Nayyar said. “We have to remember that the biggest promise that AI offers us is taking the friction out of the way so doctors and patients can go about the business of medicine.”
Later that morning, several speakers discussed healthcare barriers and bridging the gap between innovation and implementation, followed by a panel discussion featuring the morning speakers. Attendees then headed to breakout sessions in Bryant’s Academic Innovation Center, where they partook in an AI-focused presentation of their choice — such as simplifying complex challenges with design or guardrails for fairness and accountability.
In her session on navigating legal risks and questions for AI in healthcare, Leslie D. Parker, Esq., examined developing laws and regulations, key risk areas, bias in AI tools, professional liability, and AI best practices. She emphasized that providers should disclose their use of AI to patients and gain their consent. They should also develop policies and procedures on their practice’s use of AI.
“This can be something that you add into patients’ welcome packet with the privacy notice, but the more disclosure and consent you can give to patients, the better,” said Parker, a healthcare law and commercial litigation specialist.
Attendees returned to Stepan Grand Hall for lunch and heard from Bryant’s Provost and Chief Academic Officer Rupendra Paliwal, Ph.D., who spoke about the steps the university is taking to ensure graduates will have the skills to apply AI across industries.
“We are committed to preparing leaders and entrepreneurs who are going to leverage AI responsibly for their organizational success, and healthcare is an area of interest — especially with the recent growth of our School of Health and Behavioral Sciences,” said Paliwal.
Delivering the lunch keynote address, President and CEO of Brown University Medicine John Fernandez focused on the state of Rhode Island’s healthcare system, the financial implications of AI in healthcare, and how Brown University Health’s emergency department physicians are using AI. Before leaving the stage, Fernandez left attendees with several questions to ponder on.
“How can we use AI and technology to make it easier for a patient to get the care, to make it easier for a doctor or a nurse to care for a patient, and to make it easier to do clinical research?” he asked.
For the remaining half of the summit, attendees learned about using AI for cancer care, implementing AI at scale, and accelerating histopathological research discoveries with AI-powered digital pathology. One speaker, Mike Arevalo, Psy.D., PMP, director of Clinical Strategy Core Solutions, Inc., focused his talk on AI and the future of behavioral health.
Nodding to the barriers within behavioral healthcare, Arevalo spoke about recent innovations that focus on ambient documentation, clinical assistance tools, and symptom tracking. Noting the importance of ethics within the AI conversation, Arevalo emphasized the distinction between AI tools and human expertise.
“It’s important that we build to strengthen, not substitute, and that we always have a clinician who’s validating information,” said Arevalo.
Following a panel discussion with the summit’s afternoon speakers, School of Health and Behavioral Sciences Associate Director and Psychology Professor Joseph Trunzo, Ph.D., thanked attendees for their role in the Healthcare Summit’s success, which sold out in advance.
“In addition to the fantastic information that was conveyed today, I was watching all the tables and there were conversations, exchanges of business cards, and exchanges of phone numbers,” Trunzo said. “That’s what the spirit of this summit is all about. We want people to get together from all different walks of healthcare, and we want them to communicate with one another — sparking ideas and forming partnerships that go well beyond what happened in this room.”
