“The presence of technology and Artificial Intelligence creates new opportunities with respect to data management and information analysis, which is of great importance for Healthcare Management. However, its application, processing and management presents not only great advantages, but also enormous challenges,” says José Soto Bonel, President of the Spanish Society of Senior Management in Healthcare (Sociedad Española de Directivos de la Salud, SEDISA). With the aim of addressing these challenges, SEDISA, in collaboration with PONS IP, held the conference called The Challenge of the Application of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Organisations, where experts called for an appropriate regulatory framework in which intellectual property will play a fundamental role in the development of Artificial Intelligence in the field of Healthcare.

The goal of this conference is to highlight the evolution of Artificial Intelligence in the healthcare sector, the role of senior management and the impact it has on healthcare practice, as well as the regulatory and legal approach to the application of AI in healthcare organisations. In the words of Conrado Domínguez, Coordinator of the SEDISA Working Group on Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare Management and member of the SEDISA Board of Directors, “AI has enormous potential to improve efficiency in healthcare practice in a variety of ways, for example, with the transcribing of medical reports, coding of diagnoses, scheduling of appointments, patient data analytics to help make more informed clinical decisions, to improve patient safety by potentially detecting inconsistencies, it can improve communication between healthcare professionals and patients, strengthening the doctor-patient relationship and optimising the uses of healthcare services.”

And the fact is that“AI is transforming the healthcare sector at an accelerated pace, and its impact will intensify in the coming years. It is a reality that is here to stay, where the entire healthcare ecosystem is playing this game and it can also be key and an accelerator for the necessary transformation of our current Healthcare System to a healthcare system that generates more social value. It will undoubtedly bring benefits associated with greater diagnostic accuracy and more personalised medical care. It will be a tool that makes it possible to improve the sustainability of the healthcare ecosystem in all senses, generating more value and reducing both economic and environmental costs. However, there are also some challenges that need to be addressed. Ethical and legal regulatory frameworks will need to be developed to ensure the responsible use of AI in the healthcare sector.”

For all these reasons, the role of Senior Management in Healthcare is fundamental, as“they must act as leaders and promoters of this innovation, creating an environment that favours the adoption of AI in all care and non-care processes and ensuring that it is used in a responsible and ethical manner. The professionalism of this senior management will be key to the success of the huge task ahead with the implementation of AI. There will be no teams without people, but there will be no high-performing teams without the intensive use of data and AI. The successful integration of AI in our organisations requires strong leadership and significant commitment from senior management in healthcare. Senior management must promote ethics and transparency in the use of AI,” stresses Conrado Domínguez.

“How can we harness the power of generative AI without putting our data, processes and governance at risk? Artificial Intelligence is not a new technology, but with the development of Generative AI we will be part of an impact that can be compared to what occurred with the advent of the internet decades ago. When a technology with such a cross-cutting impact emerges, we cannot afford to wait and see what happens. We have to be proactive in managing these new challenges and seize the opportunities of this exciting but uncertain future. Of course, it is essential to minimise risks. To this end, it is important to define an appropriate regulatory framework in which intellectual property will play a key role. The application of AI in the healthcare sector has enormous potential, for example, to strengthen the high level of healthcare in our country, and at the same time it poses challenges due to its complex and intangible nature, and, once again, as with previous technological advances that this sector has been incorporating, intellectual property is aligned with this evolution and approach and is shown to be one of the best instruments to collaborate and promote innovation,” highlights Patricia Ramos, Assistant Director-General of PONS IP.