JHF Sponsors Exclusive AI to Advance Patient Safety Summit

Type: News

Focus Area: Patient Safety

The Pittsburgh delegation to the AI & Patient Safety Summit (left to right): Richard Boyce, Ari Lightman, Karen Feinstein, Rema Padman, Steve Irwin, Robert Ferguson, and Anand Rao.

The Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF) was a sponsor of the 3rd Annual AI to Advance Patient Safety Summit, an exclusive, invitation-only event designed to foster collaboration among leaders in healthcare innovation.

Held on November 6–8 in La Jolla, Calif., the Summit convened experts from patient safety, artificial intelligence (AI) development, policy, and advocacy to address key challenges and opportunities in applying AI to improve patient outcomes.

Designed to result in an actionable plan to propel patient safety forward through responsible and feasible integration of new AI technologies, the Summit included sessions on themes such as creating a national AI agenda for patient safety, regulatory oversight, high-harm safety areas, and emerging AI frontiers.

Several friends of the Foundation presented at the event, including: David Bates, MD, MSc, Director, Center for Patient Safety Research, Bringham and Women's Hospital; Medical Director, Clinical and Quality Analysis, Mass General Brigham; Paul Tang, MD, MS, Chief Innovation and Technology Officer and CMIO Emeritus, Palo Alto Medical Foundation; Adjunct Professor, Stanford Clinical Excellence Research Center; Patricia McGaffigan, RN MS CPPS - Senior Advisor, Patient and Workforce Safety, Institute for Healthcare Improvement; Hardeep Singh, MD MPH - Chief, Health Policy, Quality & Informatics, VA Center of Innovation, Baylor College of Medicine; David Classen, MD MS – CMIO, PascalMetrics; Professor of Medicine University of Utah; Raj Ratwani, PhD - Vice President of Scientific Affairs, MedStar Health Research Institute; Director, MedStar Health National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare; and Sue Sheridan - Founding Member, Patients for Patient Safety US.

Steve Irwin, Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) Board Co-Chair, also attended the Summit, demonstrating how these annual conferences directly inform PRHI’s patient safety strategies. Karen Wolk Feinstein, President and CEO of JHF and PRHI, highlighted (what eventually seemed to be a key theme of the conference): self-directed patient safety technologies. This topic will become a focus of PRHI’s Patient Safety Technology Challenge in 2025. To add emphasis, the two patient advocacy organizations gave the best rationale for moving quicky and deliberately in this direct.

A hit with everyone was the performance of William E. Flanary, an American comedian and ophthalmologist known by his stage name, Dr. Glaucomflecken. Using irony and exaggeration, the popular Dr. Flanary effectively shed light on failures for patients in the American healthcare system.