Slow Down to Speed Up: Practical Insights About AI in Cancer Care-Slow Down to Speed Up: Practical Insights About AI in Cancer Care

Video Transcription

Video Summary

The webinar, hosted by the Association of Cancer Care Centers, focused on practical insights for integrating AI into cancer care. Speakers from Highlands Oncology, Terrence Pierce and Jessica Redington, described their organization’s approach to AI as strategic rather than simply technical.<br /><br />They emphasized that IT should be involved early in decision-making, before contracts are signed, to help define problems, assess risk, prevent wasted spending, and avoid duplicate or poorly fitting tools. Highlands created a technology governance committee with IT, clinical informatics, operations, compliance, and security representation to review all proposed technologies, especially AI products. This committee requires a formal submission process that forces teams to think through workflow impact, ROI, ownership, security, and downstream effects.<br /><br />The speakers stressed that AI should be viewed as a tool that augments staff, not a replacement for human judgment. Human oversight remains essential, particularly in healthcare, where AI can make mistakes or fabricate information. They also highlighted the importance of testing, piloting, validating, and training users before full rollout.<br /><br />Jessica shared current AI use cases at Highlands, including diagnosis and staging support, lab order diagnosis selection, chart prep, transcription, tumor registry abstraction, scheduling support, prior authorization assistance, denial management, and MIPS reporting. The team is also expanding AI into imaging order entry and billing support.<br /><br />Overall, their message was to slow down, govern carefully, and start with high-impact problems to build trust and achieve better long-term results.

Keywords

cancer care

artificial intelligence

healthcare governance

IT involvement

technology committee

human oversight

workflow integration

AI validation

clinical informatics

prior authorization