By Tom Fleischman
The health care industry is increasingly relying on artificial intelligence – in responding to patient queries, for example – and a new Cornell study shows how decision-makers can use real-world data to build sustainability into new AI systems.
The group has offered a framework – Sustainably Advancing Health AI (SAHAI) – for optimizing AI-related energy consumption and emissions in health care settings. SAHAI considers greenhouse gas emissions generated from AI-enabled patient messaging, as well as water needed for cooling hardware in data centers, and scenarios that could affect the emissions profile of a major health system using such a tool.
“Our framework encourages health care organizations, and also technology developers, to think about these different levers and figure out how to balance the promise of AI in health care with being not only mindful of the ethical side, but also the environmental footprint of AI,” said Dr. Chethan Sarabu ’09, director of clinical innovation for the Health Tech Hub at Cornell Tech.
Read more in the Cornell Chronicle.
Tom Fleischman is a senior staff writer at the Cornell Chronicle.
