Abstract
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is coming on your desk. Long fuse…big bang. After years of talking, now the future is reality. The world is going to have a new revolution, one with implication for the humanity that is more difficult to predict than any one of the precedents.
Health and healthcare are at the forefront of this revolution. I invite health services management researchers to dive into this field.
So far, AI has been mostly studied with regards its impact on medicine. If, for once, we turn away from the dominant perspective (and threat) of AI as a “doctor” (or as a substitute for doctors, nurses or other health professionals) and try to envision its potential contribution to the management and the operations of a health care organisation, we may then explore a new realm of possibilities. That’s exactly what we should do and know. What we need to know if we want to improve the proficiency of health care leaders in managing the adoption of AI in their organisation.
There are myriad potential AI applications that extend beyond clinical care decision-making to include improvement in organisational dynamics that AI can facilitate, support, enhance, and augment.
Additional questions regard how many AIs can or should operate in a health system. Do they need authorisation? Who has the right to develop them? Furthermore, how will AI affect the medical workforce and clinical researchers? How will health care organisations build their competitive advantage when AI applications are ubiquitous throughout a health care system (and yes, they need to be for the sake of equity), steadily encroaching on the professionalism established in years of personal study, practice, research and investment. How can life science change its inner dynamics of research and competition?
Presently, we do not know enough to answer these questions.
Further, we don’t know what will the consequences be for countries like Italy, the UK, Scandinavia, Spain, and Portugal where the public national health service is a major national employer and the local health organisation or hospital is the largest employer and driver of the local economy in some geographical areas.
These issues regard the political and the institutional environment, involve setting limits and authorisation for the uses of AI in health care, responsibilities for its development and maintenance, and means to guarantee equity in its accessibility and availability within the whole health sector. They should be on the agenda of politicians and authorities. For the governance of the health and life science sector. For the regulators and administrators of the system and the health care sector.
That is why I believe it’s a call for action. The responsibility of health management/policy researchers is to support the decision makers in navigating this complex revolution. Therefore I strongly invite submissions to this journal of works related to AI managerial implications.
After all, as Max Weber highlighted… “Die Wissenschaft soll Klarheit schaffen”, or “Science is asked to serve clarity”.
