Capitol News

Congressman Tom Barrett of Michigan’s 7th Congressional District led a House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization hearing, focusing on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve healthcare for veterans. Dr. Mohammad Ghassemi, an assistant professor at Michigan State University’s College of Engineering, was invited to provide expert testimony.

During the hearing, Barrett questioned Ghassemi about whether AI could assist the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in modernizing its electronic health record system and how such technologies could be implemented while safeguarding veterans’ privacy and consent rights.

"We're trying to upgrade this legacy health record system … [and] modernize some of the easy-lift items that can be done through assistive technology or augmented. Do you think that's achievable … and how do you think that the VA can do this responsibly to make sure that it's done in the appropriate way?" Barrett asked.

Ghassemi responded: "So the short answer is: I think it's achievable. How can it be done responsibly? It has to start first and foremost with unification of the data. … Instead of thinking of AI's role as coming in after you've done a very heavy-duty and costly and inglorious task of aligning that data. You can use the AI tools to perform alignment of that data, right? To ask how you do the combination of the information, the de-biasing considerations that were brought up earlier and so on."

Barrett also raised concerns about maintaining veterans' privacy when using new technologies: "How do you think balancing the access to this [AI technology], and the benefit that comes from that, with keeping the paramount interest of veterans’ consent and privacy and all of those things that we can't miss the mark on, as well?"

Ghassemi emphasized transparency: "I think disclosure is really important — transparency. So you know when we go to a supermarket and we turn around an item that's on the shelf? On the back is disclosed to us through the nutrition label, what are the contents inside of the food that we purchase. In a similar way, if you think of care that we receive as an item, then we need a similar way to inspect what components, which parts of the ingredients in that care came from which sources. Did they come from a model that Oracle trained on their Cerner ecosystem? Did they come from an academic paper? Did they come from a clinician's judgment? So the traceability of that decision and making it transparent, back to the end consumer of the care, which is the veteran, that's really important because they have a right to know how care is being derived prior to consenting to receive it. So I think that transparency sits at the beating heart of doing this correctly."

The hearing addressed both opportunities and challenges presented by integrating AI into VA systems, particularly regarding responsible data management practices.