Massachusetts Secretary of Economic Development Yvonne Hao announced a $555,000 grant from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative to UMass Chan on April 10, to be matched with $137,000 private investment, for the establishment of the Health AI Assurance Laboratory, in partnership with MITRE and the Coalition for Health AI. Pictured at the announcement, from left to right: Francis Campion, MITRE; Ozgur Eris, MITRE; Brian Anderson, CHAI; Carolyn Kirk, MassTech; Patrick Larkin, MassTech; Secretary Yvonne Hao; Terence R. Flotte, UMass Chan; Michael F. Collins, UMass Chan; Senator Robyn Kennedy; Doug Robbins, MITRE; Melissa Fischer, UMass Chan; Miles Thompson, MITRE; David McManus, UMass Chan.
UMass Chan Medical School and MITRE, operator of federally funded research and development centers, announced the establishment of the Health AI Assurance Laboratory, a collaborative initiative to advance health artificial intelligence in the public interest. The initiative is at the forefront of efforts in the United States, and the first in Massachusetts, to ensure AI technology in health care is safe and effective for everyone using it.
The announcement took place April 10 at UMass Chan in Worcester, at which Yvonne Hao, Massachusetts secretary of economic development, presented an award for $555,000 from the Innovation Institute at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative as part of its Technology & Innovation Ecosystem Awards Program. The Health AI Assurance Laboratory will also receive $137,000 in matching private investment.
“We are committed to researching and developing health AI tools to strengthen our state’s leadership in health care,” said Secretary Hao, who is also co-chair of the state’s Artificial Intelligence Strategic Task Force. “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. Through the leadership of the world-class researchers at UMass Chan and MITRE, this new lab will help us build a stronger health AI industry in Massachusetts and accelerate responsible innovation for the global marketplace.”
“UMass Chan, a national leader in research, continues to make great strides to change the course of history of disease,” said Chancellor Michael F. Collins. “Together with MITRE and support from the Innovation Institute at MassTech, current and future health care 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.”
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The Health AI Assurance Laboratory team is led by Program in Digital Medicine founder David McManus, MD'02, MSc'12, the Richard M. Haidack Professor of Medicine, chair and professor of medicine; Adrian Zai, MD, PhD, MPH, associate professor of population & quantitative health sciences; and Miles Thompson, AI assurance solutions lead at MITRE. The team will work with collaborators from education, health care systems, private industry, nonprofit organizations and public agencies to evaluate specific health AI applications. The program builds both on UMass Chan’s Center for Advancing Point of Care Technologies as well as UMass Chan’s experience with the National Institutes of Health Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics, or RADx, program.
According to Dr. McManus, the Health AI Assurance Laboratory, along with its supplemental knowledge base of tools and methods, will evaluate AI technologies using capabilities developed by MITRE’s AI Assurance and Discovery Lab in its Blueprint for Trustworthy AI Implementation Guidance and Assurance for Healthcare. The framework addresses human-centered values and ethics; technical robustness and safety; transparency; diversity and fairness; society and environmental well-being; and accountability.
The Health AI Assurance Laboratory will be the first state-funded AI assurance laboratory and will employ a “human-in-the-loop” testing framework in which industry partners can evaluate the impact of new AI technologies in simulated health care work settings, including UMass Chan’s interprofessional Center for Experiential Learning and Simulation and through the Massachusetts Medical Device Development Center, known as M2D2, workspaces at UMass Lowell and UMass Chan, McManus said. iCELS can simulate a wide range of scenarios, including those in clinic rooms, inpatient facilities, eICUs, hospital-at-home environments and other settings.
The initiative aims to boost the region’s health AI workforce through internships, an innovation and entrepreneurship training course, and partnerships with high school and undergraduate STEM programs.
Terence R. Flotte, MD, the Celia and Isaac Haidak Professor, executive deputy chancellor, provost of UMass Chan and dean of the T.H. Chan School of Medicine, said, “AI has been incorporated into clinical care in numerous ways, but unlike with other interventions, there has been very little regulatory oversight of these tools. Drugs and devices that are used in clinical care must be proven to be safe and effective and are tracked after approval to confirm safety and effectiveness in a real-world setting. That has not been consistently done with AI tools. One of the important goals of the AI assurance labs is to begin to fill this gap.”
“With support from MassTech, we’re excited to partner with UMass Chan Medical School to launch the Health AI Assurance Laboratory,” said Doug Robbins, vice president of MITRE. “Having just opened MITRE’s national AI Assurance & Discovery Lab in Northern Virginia, we look forward to sharing our AI assurance resources and expertise with the UMass Chan team. Connecting both labs will be the very first step in creating what we envision as a national network of AI assurance labs, and we celebrate the Bay State for being at the forefront of that movement.”
“Given the immense potential of AI to transform everyday life, we want to be mindful of its overall impact.” said Patrick Larkin, director of the Innovation Institute at MassTech and a member of the AI Strategic Task Force. “That means supporting investments that ultimately provide startups and established companies with the necessary tools, methods, processes, infrastructure and a simulated real-world environment to develop and refine their AI-driven solutions in a controlled setting. This will help promote safety and efficacy, while facilitating collaboration, data sharing, and the development of cutting-edge technologies that will further position Massachusetts as a global leader in health AI. We want to congratulate UMass Chan, MITRE and their partners in building a strong foundation for future, emerging industries across the state.”
