From AI implementation to digital health adoption and EHR usability, the AMA is fighting to make technology work for physicians, ensuring that it is an asset for doctors and the patients they care for. To that end, the AMA last year created the Center for Digital Health and AI, which works to ensure physicians help shape how AI is developed, implemented and regulated across the healthcare system, with patient safety and physician-led care remaining at the center of those efforts.
In September, the AMA named Jennifer Goldsack, MChem, MA, MBA, OLY, as the center’s inaugural leader and a senior vice president at the nation’s largest and oldest physician organization. She comes to the AMA from the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe), a global nonprofit dedicated to advancing digital medicine to optimize health that Goldsack founded in 2019. She built the organization into a leading global authority on the evidence, policy, and practice needed to advance digital technologies in healthcare and research.
“We are at a defining moment for medicine. Digital health and augmented intelligence are rapidly and fundamentally changing how and where care is delivered. For these tools to reach their full potential and be effective for patients, physicians must lead the way in developing and implementing them,” AMA CEO John Whyte, MD, MPH, said in announcing the hire.
“Jennifer is the right leader for this moment because she knows how to bring physicians and innovators together and translate that collaboration into real-word impact on patient care,” he added.
Goldsack recently sat down for an interview with the AMA. Responses have been edited for length.
AMA: Tell our readers about your decision to join the American Medical Association. What attracted you to the role as senior vice president and inaugural leader of the AMA Center for Digital Health and AI?
Goldsack: I've spent my professional career at the forefront of innovation in healthcare. I've witnessed, for decades now, that we've been pursuing better outcomes, improved access to care. We've been trying to wrap our arms around the high and still increasing costs of care. We've also recognized that the well-being of our physician and broader clinical workforce is unacceptable and we need to show up and support our provider colleagues better.
And for decades, there's been enormous investment and work on all of these topics, and yet we've struggled to have a positive impact. We've watched costs continue to go up. We've watched it continue to be incredibly difficult for physicians and our clinical colleagues to continue to care for patients. We've watched health outcomes continue to decline along with life expectancy. And healthcare is more inequitable than ever.
I feel very, very strongly that—while I'm not a tech determinist and while I don't think these technologies are going to be a silver bullet—these are some of the most powerful tools we've ever been able to access to address these issues. And in this moment of investment and rapid, rapid advancement of these incredibly powerful tools, the AMA is the right place for us to be able to ensure that we deploy these tools and technologies in a way that actually ensures that the industry that exists to care for people endures into the future. And I believe it should be a physician-led endeavor. That was Dr. Whyte's vision for the center, and I'm incredibly proud to champion that.
AMA: The AMA worked with DiMe while you were there to bring together leaders in medicine, health systems, government, technology and the patient community to more comprehensively define physician’ role in the digital and AI era of medicine.
That led to a framework identifying five responsibilities that remain fundamental to the profession, including preserving trust through human connection and physicians leading the evolution of medicine practice. Please talk a little about that collaboration and how the work will shape what comes next.
Goldsack: Defining the physician’s role in the digital and AI era of medicine has to be a North Star for this work. I was deeply involved in this work from the DiMe side, and one of the things that attracted me to the AMA was Dr. Whyte’s recognition that we needed to answer this fundamental question: what does it mean to practice medicine as technology transforms how care is delivered? That foundation is essential to the center’s work to ensure physicians lead the transformation of medicine in the digital and AI era.
That work also reflects how we intend to lead: by bringing together stakeholders from across healthcare, technology, government and the patient community to tackle the complex questions that no single group can answer alone. That approach shaped the development of the framework (PDF) and the roadmap (PDF) and will continue to drive our work going forward.
The AMA has the reach and credibility to convene that big tent, with physicians at the heart of the conversation. As the most highly trained clinical professionals, physicians bring expertise and experience that are essential to shaping how these technologies transform medicine and patient care.
AMA: What will be some overarching priorities in your role as senior vice president of the AMA Center for Digital Health and AI? What will you and your team be focused on?
Goldsack: The center’s strategy is built around three pillars: governance, economic sustainability and care transformation. Governance addresses the rules and responsibilities that will shape this transformation, including licensure, liability and regulation. Economic sustainability focuses on how we pay for and sustain technology-enabled care. And care transformation is about turning the potential of these technologies into meaningful improvements in how physicians practice and how patients receive care.
Across all three, our work will be grounded in evidence. Technology will continue to change, and quickly. Our responsibility is to establish what good looks like, generate and translate the evidence needed to get there, and create the conditions for physicians and patients to benefit from innovation. Ultimately, success means using these extraordinarily powerful tools to improve care and outcomes while supporting the physicians and broader care teams responsible for delivering that care.
AMA: How do you see the center contributing to the national conversation surrounding AI in medicine?
Goldsack: We will provide powerful thought leadership. We will define the questions, frameworks, principles and positions that shape how the field moves forward. And we will translate physician expertise, strategy and evidence into policy and advocacy to help build the future of medicine that we actually want.
We will also generate evidence so people can look to the AMA for trusted data, information, insights and resources. That includes practical tools that both our members—whether they're in private practice, whether they're employed—can reach for to benefit from these technologies in their clinical practice and, where appropriate, in running their businesses. We want physicians to be able to confidently adopt what the evidence shows is safe, effective and useful, while recognizing where the evidence is still developing. and to make sure that they're able to access what we already know is safe and effective and helpful and can be prepared to make sure that they're not getting ahead of where the evidence is.
AMA: Should physicians be thinking of clinical AI as a threat or as an opportunity?
Goldsack: The role of the AMA and the role of the center is to make sure that AI represents an opportunity for physicians and, ultimately, for the patients they care for. These tools should help physicians practice medicine in the way they want to, spend more time on the work that matters most, and deliver better care and outcomes for patients.
Realizing that opportunity will require nuance, hard work and deep engagement with physicians as well as stakeholders from across the healthcare ecosystem. I joined the AMA because I believe we can lead that work and help shape a future in which these extraordinarily powerful technologies strengthen the practice of medicine and improve the way we care for people.
AMA: What, if any, impact do you think the current headline-grabbing discussion around the so-called extinction risk of AI tools will have on the closer-to-the-ground practical discussion that we're having about use of AI in healthcare?
Goldsack: Since that news broke, we have been actively sprinting to do a nationwide detailed patient-sentiment survey. I don't think it's ethically appropriate for us to speculate about how patients are thinking about this. We need to ask them. And, importantly, patients should help shape how we ask the question. That's why we've brought patient investigators onto the research team and are working in close partnership with patient experts and colleagues throughout the study. If we want to understand what patients think and what they need to trust these technologies, their expertise needs to be embedded in the work from the beginning.
There's already a strong body of work, led by patient organizations and patient experts themselves alongside researchers, examining what it will take for patients to trust AI. But we don’t have data that captures patient preference in the face of increasingly prominent warnings about the potential risks these technologies could pose to the future of humanity and strong and sustained calls—including from leaders of the world’s largest AI companies—to slow down.
Building on our physician-sentiment survey on AI, we are moving quickly to capture representative data on patient perspectives from across the country. This is also an example of how the Center will lead: generating trusted, timely evidence that informs the AMA’s work and helps the broader field navigate a rapidly changing landscape.
