TL;DRDonna R. Cryer argues healthcare is deploying AI without meaningful patient representation in governance. She advocates for a Chief Patient Officer role and warns that without patient-centric design, the industry risks repeating its history of exclusion at scale.
Artificial intelligence is entering healthcare at a pace that, according to Donna R. Cryer, risks outpacing the governance structures needed to support it responsibly. Cryer believes hospitals, payers, pharmaceutical companies, and digital health organizations are introducing AI systems into clinical and operational environments without sufficiently involving the people most affected by those decisions, which are the patients.
Cryer, a healthcare executive, attorney, board advisor, and founder of organizations including CryerHealth and the nonprofit Global Liver Institute, believes the healthcare industry now faces an important choice. Leaders can either repeat longstanding mistakes tied to excluding patients from major healthcare decisions, or they can use the emergence of AI as an opportunity to build governance structures correctly from the beginning.
“We have seen the benefits of engaging patients. But actually having patients in leadership roles is the next frontier,” she shares. Cryer points to the evolution of patient engagement across clinical trials and healthcare innovation as evidence that patient involvement improves outcomes.
