The University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and the MITRE Corporation will collaborate to manage the Health AI Assurance Laboratory thanks to a $555,000 grant from the Technology & Innovation Ecosystem Awards Program in Massachusetts and a private sector match, the MassTech Collaborative announced on Wednesday.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
According to the collaborative, the lab’s objectives are to promote healthcare innovators’ commercial applications, encourage the reliable and responsible use of health AI, and contribute to the development of national standards for the evaluation of digital health technologies.
The lab’s goal includes developing opportunities for workforce development, even though the funds will also go toward building physical spaces for collaboration, workforce training, and research and development aimed at guaranteeing the safety of health AI products before they’re put into general use.
The new health AI lab at UMass, in partnership with MITRE, will offer high school, undergraduate, and post-graduate students wishing to get into AI practical experience and refine their AI assurance skills.
Yvonne Hao, secretary of the Executive Office of Economic Development and co-chair of the state’s AI strategic taskforce, believes that the new lab, under the direction of UMass Chan and MITRE experts, will contribute to the growth of the health AI industry.
“The new Health AI Assurance Laboratory is an incredible opportunity to grow the AI ecosystem by building strategic partnerships and providing career opportunities to students in data analysis, informatics and machine learning,” Hao stated in a press release.
THE MAJOR TREND
MITRE established its first AI Assurance and Discovery Lab in McLean, Virginia, in March, with the goal of identifying and reducing significant risks associated with AI-enabled systems.
“Offering an unbiased evaluation of the security, safety, and effectiveness of AI systems will be crucial in assisting government and industry in incorporating novel technology,” stated Charles Clancy, senior vice president and chief technology officer of MITRE’s Virginia headquarters.
He went on, “This lab will showcase an engineering methodology that is repeatable and infrastructure that could act as a model for a nationwide network of AI assurance facilities.”
A key component of prudent AI implementation will be certification, as disruptive technologies present new dangers for enterprises from the outset.
In October, HITRUST introduced an AI assurance program for the healthcare industry in addition to MITRE.
The goal of the HITRUST AI Assurance Program is to assist companies implementing AI in communicating with their AI service providers more effectively and proactively, as well as to explore strategies for shared risk.
Robert Booker, chief strategy officer of HITRUST, stated in the release that “risk management, security, and assurance for AI systems requires that organizations contributing to the system understand the risks across the system and agree how they together secure the system.”
IN THE RECORD
The chancellor of UMass Chan Medical School, Michael Collins, said in a statement that “together with MITRE and with support from the Innovation Institute at MassTech, current and future healthcare professionals will be able to create and guide AI technology to fulfill its promise of better, more efficient, and more equitable patient care across our communities.”
Vice president at MITRE Doug Robbins continued, “We look forward to sharing our AI assurance resources and expertise with the UMass team as we recently opened MITRE’s national AI Assurance & Discovery Lab in northern Virginia.”
“Connecting both labs will be the very first step in creating what we envision as a national network of AI assurance labs,” he stated.
