The World Economic Forum draws a fair amount of criticism. To some, the annual conference – held amid a gorgeous setting in Davos, Switzerland – is a pointless gathering of plutocrats and politicos who simply like to be seen as the type of people who, well, go to Davos.

“On its face, Davos appears to be a meeting out of touch with the times, focused more on privilege than social change, economic displacement, or cross-cutting global challenges,” as one writer put it in a 2020 article for the Brookings Institution. And this author was defending Davos.

But the event undeniably attracts business and government leaders who wield the power and influence to effect change. And for those willing to work on issues, attending the WEF can be both rewarding and consequential.

Count Bob Garrett in that category. The CEO of Hackensack Meridian Health is a regular participant and clearly sees his attendance as a positive for his work running a large health care system. This year, Garrett served as chair of the WEF’s Health and Healthcare Community, a leadership role that puts him at the center of crucial policy discussions for two years.

Not long after returning to the U.S., Garrett sat down with NJBIZ to describe his new role, the time he spent in Davos and how the health care industry must evolve to meet urgent global needs.

Perhaps not surprisingly, artificial intelligence was a major topic throughout the event. “What we decided to do was to look at our four health care priorities through the lens of artificial intelligence,” Garrett said. “The four major pillars, if you will, in terms of the priorities, were increasing access to health care around the globe, closing some of the disparities that exist in terms of health equity issues around the globe as well. The third pillar was improving value, improving outcomes for health and health care. And the fourth was climate change’s impact on health and health care. … How could artificial intelligence help us achieve some of the goals under those four priority areas?”

What follows is an abridged version of that discussion. The questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity. A video of the full interview is available at njbiz.com/njbizconversations.

NJBIZ: AI is certainly the topic du jour – at almost every meeting I attend, someone wants to talk about AI. And you wrote an article for the World Economic Forum on AI. So, can you tell us a little bit about each of those things? How does AI fit into what you’re talking about, and what those discussions were like when you were talking about those four pillars?

Robert Garrett: So first of all, you couldn’t go probably two feet in Davos without hearing about AI. It was everywhere, from Bill Gates talking about it to world leaders talking about it to us in the health care community talking about it. And it obviously has a profound impact on the financial institutions and on the energy sector, as well as education and health care. …

The format was that we assembled a panel of experts to talk about those four areas and how AI might impact those areas. And also, frankly, what are some of the safeguards that we have to put in place to make sure that AI is deployed safely and accurately, and information – particularly patient information – isn’t compromised. So, starting on that health panel, we had CEOs of device companies, pharmaceutical companies, and then one major health system. The CEO of the Mayo Clinic was on that on that panel. And we talked about individual use cases at each of their companies in terms of how AI is really powering advances.

As an example — in the area of expanding health care access, there’s no doubt that AI can connect patients and communities, if you will, with health and health care providers like never before, particularly in underserved areas through information, through algorithms that can really provide better health information to those communities.

So there was a lot of discussion around health access, and how we safely deploy AI to improve access to health care with respect to health equity. If you think about it, there’s such a disparity depending on whether you’re in a so-called developed country or underdeveloped country. Life expectancy can vary up to 30 years, depending on where you live. So, the idea was, how can we deploy artificial intelligence to close some of those health equity gaps?

For example, one of the use cases that we have going at Hackensack Meridian Health is to identify advanced kidney disease earlier, which disproportionately impacts minority communities. And you know, with that identification or detection of disease earlier, our clinicians can either prevent the onset or slow it down and could save years of dialysis that a patient might have to encounter, and even put off complete kidney failure. So that’s just one example of where AI detecting disease earlier can have a profound impact on health equity.

The third area was value and outcome improvement. I have to tell you there’s a lot of AI use cases — whether it’s enabling radiologists to prioritize scans for those patients that might have a problematic diagnosis, AI can not only take a look with an intense focus on the scan and the scan itself, but actually can aggregate a lot of the patient data around that scan so that everything is being looked at at one time. It can tell the radiologists that might be reading 150 or 200 scans a day, OK let’s prioritize these three or four, because these look like they need immediate attention. …

Another use case out there for improving value or improving outcomes is in optimization. A lot of times there are holes in the operating room. Schedule cancellations happen. And through AI algorithms, you can really fill in those holes with surgical procedures where families or patients might be waiting a long time for that procedure. Get them in earlier. It’s better for their care. It lowers the length to stay. So, it really has some great impact.

There was one children’s hospital we talked about, I think it was in Arizona, that was actually using artificial intelligence and algorithms to detect malnutrition in children who were previously missed. And I think they were picking up seven, eight, maybe 10 children a week with that who had malnutrition that they didn’t pick up before. So, there’s a lot in the way of value and outcome improvement.

Then, in the area of climate change [and its] impact on health and health care – a lot of great use cases are out there. But certainly through AI, we can predict dramatic climatic events like the one we had this summer where the smoke came down from Canada and caused havoc in our emergency departments. Some events like that can be predicted, so you can prepare a little bit better.

It also can help us in terms of our own energy consumption and our own carbon emissions in terms of reducing them, because health care – unfortunately – contributes to climate change.

Following that panel, we had a discussion among the amongst the group, the governors themselves. Then we invited the health ministers from around the globe to come in and get their perspective on AI and health care. And they included the health minister from Brazil, included the health minister from India, the head of the Institute of Medicine in the U.S. and Dr. Tedros [Adhanom Ghebreyesus], who is the head of the World Health Organization. Great discussion. Talked about regulations, talked about how there needs to be a partnership to really develop regulatory tools. And there was a realization also that the technology is changing so quickly that the regulations could never keep up with that. So that’s why it’s important that the private sector, if you will – the providers and the drug makers and the device makers – have to work hand in glove with the regulators.

Once that ended, everybody got back together again. The governance group broke into groups and came out with an agenda moving forward and an action plan moving forward. So, it was a really good session.

Q: And I want to hear about the action plan and then what’s going to happen in the future. But you gave us a lot to unpack there, and I wanted to go back to the use of AI and I’m sure you are using it at HMH, now, and probably it’s being used around the country and around the world. In the case of, as you first described detection of kidney disease. How does that work? How does how does AI help you there?

A: Well, because what it can do is aggregate information from the patient record, so that clinicians really have a lot of information that maybe was in different places [that] wasn’t readily available or accessible. So, when patients are screened the algorithm can pull in all of that data, all that information, and come up with some suggestions or ideas.

And let me also reassure everybody who’s watching or listening to this that there’s human intervention all the way through. So, we’re not talking about a car that drives itself, or a plane that flies itself. This is in health care. It’s important that any of these use case pilots that are going on have humans that monitor it, make sure that they test the information and make sure it’s accurate — that privacy is protected and that ultimately, the decision to use that information is being made by a human being.

In the case that we’re talking about, advanced kidney disease, that is obviously a nephrologist or different types of kidney specialists are going to make the final decision. So we’re not at that point where this is how patients are being diagnosed. It’s a tool to be used by clinicians. But there’s no doubt it can be a very powerful tool, and it’s a great technology if it’s used the right way in a health care setting to really advance our goals.

Q: You mentioned some of the pitfalls, guardrails that that need to be erected. What were the discussions around those subjects like? What is the main concern that folks have about the use of AI?

A: Well, I think in health care it’s two things. Number one is making sure that the information is accurate, particularly if it’s going to be used on the clinical side. That’s really important. And even if it’s being used just to enhance productivity, you want to make sure that it’s doing the right job. If it’s taking some functions or making a team member’s job a little bit [easier] because they can get the information quicker, you’ve got to make sure that that information is accurate. It’s reliable.

The other safeguard, I think, in health care, is making sure that patient records are protected. So, as these algorithms are put in place and information is assembled, you want to make sure that the information stays confidential, and that no HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] violations occur. …

I have to say that the policy makers from around the globe are really looking to the industry to help guide them in terms of the safeguards of these regulations, because as I said, the technology is probably changing much quicker than they could ever write regulations about. President [Joe] Biden signed in an executive order late in 2023 that kind of set out some guidelines for a public-private partnership to develop the right safeguards for AI and health care. And many organizations like Hackensack Meridian have been participating in that process.

So, I was happy to hear that the policymakers weren’t trying to impose regulations necessarily, but really wanted to work with the industry, because we both want the same thing. We want the same protections out there — whether you’re a health care provider or a policymaker or elected official. You want to do the right thing. And you want to make sure people’s lives are protected. But you also don’t want to slow down innovation. You don’t want arbitrary regulations that actually stipulate the development of these advances because they could literally transform health care moving forward.

Q: I’m guessing everybody has some homework that they have to do. So, what are the next steps? How do you take the discussions that happened in Davos and put them into practice, into action?

A: Well, that’s a great question. And you know I made it very clear as the chair that I want to do just that. I know I’m not waiting for next year’s Davos to pick this up again. We already have our steering committee that’s being scheduled. We’re going to have meetings every month. And we’re going to try to get the governors, the community, the entire health care community back a couple of times during the during the year as well. It’s hard, you know, with folks’ schedules. Obviously, Davos is where they all converge and it’s easier to have those discussions. But we’re going to make every effort to do that.

So, we’re going to take what came out of Davos – what came out of those discussions, the document that was produced – and we’re going to continue having those discussions with the steering committee in terms of ways that we can deploy and start to take some definitive actions. And then I’m hoping, sometime in middle of the year, we can get the full community back together, and have some additional discussions about not only where we are, from Davos to that point, but where we’re going and making sure that the full board community endorses it.