Kaiser Permanente Announces New Grant Program for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Health Care

The Permanente Medical Group announced the launch of the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research (KP-DOR) Augmented Intelligence in Medicine and Healthcare Initiative (AIM-HI) Coordinating Center. The new program will lead a national research effort focused on evaluating the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to enhance diagnostic decision-making in health care.

With support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, AIM-HI will award grants of up to $750,000 for three to five US health care systems to support the use of AI and ML to improve diagnoses and patient outcomes. AI and ML have shown promise in early warning systems that analyze hospital patients’ data to identify when patients are at risk of serious decline and may need intervention; large language models similar to ChatGPT that streamline medical record notetaking; and computer vision technology to analyze medical images for tumors, cancers and surgical guidance.

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“We’re aiming to cut through the buzz around AI in health care to prove the promise and positive impact of this exciting technology for improving patient outcomes,” said Vincent Liu, MD, principal investigator of AIM-HI. “In addition to supporting algorithmic research, the AIM-HI program will develop best practices, and improve the capacity for AI/ML deployment in diverse health care settings. It’s vital that we use these powerful tools thoughtfully and in a way that scales to benefit patients, physicians and care teams.”

The request for proposals is now open and letters of intent are due June 30, 2023. A national advisory committee and expert reviewers from Kaiser Permanente will assess proposals and work closely with the selected project teams during their 2-year grant period.

“At Kaiser Permanente, we’ve demonstrated the real-world benefits of AI and ML with groundbreaking algorithms,” said Stephen Parodi, MD, executive vice president of The Permanente Federation. “Our early warning systems are at work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to identify high-risk hospitalized patients. One of these programs has saved an estimated 500 lives a year. With this initiative we hope to support the spread of impactful work in health systems of all sizes across the country.”

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