Disseminate information about updates to end users
Why does this matter?
Informing clinical end users and affected stakeholders about the status of AI products builds trust and empowers clinicians, patients, and community members to understand the role of technology in healthcare delivery. Additionally, iInformation flows between organizational leaders and front-line workers using an AI product serves as an accountability check to ensure products continue to fulfill their objectives.
While it’s important that health care delivery settings are transparent with patients within the target population of AI product use, most organizations do little on that front today.
How to do this?
Step 1: Empower necessary stakeholders
- Ensure that clinical champions are prepared to take responsibility over outcomes, communicate information to front-line workers and contribute to decisions to update or decommission the AI product.
- Ensure that senior leaders within the organization and business unit leading the roll out participate in disseminating information related to updating or decommissioning an AI product
“it is up to the clinical and operational champions to champion it across the network, to educate their users and inform them of the new responsibilities and expectations.”
Technical leader
Step 2: Ensure proper documentation and planning
- Centrally host all materials and documentation on a web page accessible to front-line workers that maintains up-to-date information on the status of an AI product in clinical use.
- Clearly document why the AI product is updated or decommissioned.
- Identify and document alternate workflows prior to decommissioning.
- Maintain protocols and plans a-propri about how changes to an AI product will be communicated.
- Ensure that external vendors disclose information about updates or changes to the AI product. This should be agreed upon during the preliminary assessment of the external AI product.
“we go to the chair meeting, we go to system governance, we go to exec. We try to hit the Department meetings as much as we can and then we also communicate via the electronic storyboards. We make sure that an email goes out…from the nurse manager in their service line”
Operational Leader
Step 3: Disseminate information
- For updating an AI product
- Update the relevant documentation described in Step 2 of disseminating information to end users and follow the process for communicating updates described in Step 5.
- Communicate to front-line workers and affected clinicians that an update has occurred.
- Ensure that online documentation repositories have clear version tracking which allow users to review prior versions of materials.
- For decommissioning an AI product
- Complete the decommission activities to minimize disruptions or harms.
- Update all online documentation to convey that the AI product is no longer in use with records indicating the decommission date.
- Conduct an audit of the AI product and publish results on the same online repository that contains documentation about the product.
- Consider sharing the AI product audit with peer-institutions as a case study and resource.