AI in Healthcare

The potential value of AI to healthcare, and nursing in particular, ranges from improving quality and efficiency of care to delivering on the promise of personalized and precision medicine. AI systems may become virtually indispensable as ever more data is amassed about every aspect of health. AI can help reduce variability in care, while improving precision, accelerating discovery and reducing disparities. AI can empower patients and potentially allow healthcare professionals to relate to their patients as healers supported by the combined wisdom of the best medical research and analytic technology. There are, however, many challenges to understanding the optimal uses of AI; addressing the technological, systemic, regulatory and attitudinal roadblocks to successful implementation; and integrating AI into the fabric of health care. This paper provides a grounding in the origins and fundamental building blocks of AI, applications in healthcare and for nursing, and the critical challenges facing implementation in healthcare.

Rapid-Cycle Experimentation With State and Federal Policymakers for Optimizing the Reach of Racial Equity Research

Racial disparities and racism are pervasive public health threats that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, it is critical and timely for researchers to communicate with policymakers about strategies for reducing disparities. From April through July 2020, across four rapid-cycle trials disseminating scientific products with evidence-based policy recommendations for addressing disparities, we tested strategies for optimizing the reach of scientific messages to policymakers. By getting such research into the hands of policymakers who can act on it, this work can help combat racial health disparities. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print September 9, 2021:e1–e4. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306404 )

Improving Health Equity and Reducing Disparities in Pediatric and Adolescent/Young Adult Oncology: In Support of Clinical Practice Guidelines

Despite extraordinary strides in cancer therapy over the past 30 years, racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and age-related survival disparities persist. Hodgkin lymphoma offers an excellent paradigm to understand these disparities because successful approaches are well established in both the up-front and relapsed treatment settings. The following review, which accompanies the 2021 NCCN Guidelines for Pediatric Hodgkin Lymphoma, suggests that systemic inequities in cancer care disproportionately affect minority and low-income children, adolescents, and young adults, and directly contribute to observed disparities in cancer-related outcomes. It proposes that the first step toward reducing disparities is large-scale dissemination of guidelines, because equity is best achieved when treatment approaches are clear, comprehensive, and standardized across all clinical practice settings.