Adrian Mayers,DrBA, is chief information security officer at Premera Blue Cross. Around three years ago, the company convened its Data and AI Ethics Committee to develop the guiding principles for the company’s AI use, he told Becker’s.
“This was even before generative AI was a big, mainstream thing,” he said. “We thought we should be thinking about our data, our artificial intelligence, in a different way. When you bring those two things together, there’s always going to be an ethical piece that you have to navigate.”
The committee brought together leaders from across the company in legal, human resources, communications, vendor management and leaders from different business lines. It landed on five principles for the company’s AI and data efforts: be transparent, be fair, protect privacy and security, be accountable and continually improve.
“The [lines are] represented because the voice of the customer is so important,” Dr. Mayers said. “We didn’t want to dilute that in some shape or form or interpret it. We wanted to be able to ask: ‘What are our customers thinking and what are they looking for?'”
Premera Blue Cross was also one of more than 20 healthcare organizations that signed on to a White House pledge aimed at improving security, safety and transparency in healthcare AI.
The five guiding principles the committee created inform all the AI products the company implements, whether they are purchased from a vendor or developed at Premera, Dr. Mayers said.
Looking ahead
AI can help leverage efficiency and reduce administrative burdens in healthcare — but it can also make cybercriminals sharper, Dr. Mayers said.
“Criminals tend to be very creative,” he said. “This is another significant tool set they have access to. We’re trying to be super proactive there.”
In addition to creating the right cybersecurity countermeasures, communicating to customers and the public about how AI is used and how it works is another top priority, Dr. Mayers said.
It is important that people understand the intent behind how AI is used and how it can enrich and augment productivity, he said.
“If you don’t do that, people will create their own narratives to fill a vacuum,” he said.
Another top priority for Dr. Mayers in 2025: Giving Premera employees the opportunity to experiment with AI. Employees, from senior leaders all the way down, should have opportunities to learn the limits of the technology and what limits they have self-imposed, he said.
“The ability to create and be creative with his technology is amazing,” he said. “When you give somebody permission to play around and not be judged or ridiculed, you start to create a very different culture.”