Adoption of AI and Blockchain at HHS: Interview with Jose Arrieta, US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS)

Many governments worldwide are looking at using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other cognitive technologies as part of making their operations more efficient, better serving their citizens, and increasing the range of ways they can meet their missions. It’s no surprise then that the US Government and forward-thinking leadership is making investments into AI technologies. Additionally, some agencies such as the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) are also seeing how other emerging technologies such as blockchain can help.

HOW HHS IS ADOPTING AI AND BLOCKCHAIN : Jose Arrieta, the CIO at the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), interviewed on a recent AI Today podcast episode while he was the Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Acquisition at HHS is one such leader who sees how AI and blockchain can have a big impact at the agency. He became a program manager to build IT systems to use machine learning to analyze biographical information about people. His role evolved into an individual in the government to implement blockchain within artificial intelligence and machine learning focusing on data and data analytics.

HHS is a very large agency with over $1.1 trillion dollars of impact on US GDP. The agency is there to protect the human condition from infectious diseases. With AI and blockchain technology, Jose is looking into deriving insights to drive costs down as it relates to operating and protecting the human condition and save human lives. As a large organization with over a million contracts issued over an 18 month period, Mr. Arrieta realized it would be helpful to get an understanding of the contracting activity that is occurring across the HHS portfolio.

However, one of the challenges is that HHS is decentralized to the point that it is hard to get this level of visibility without trying to centralize the organization, an effort which would be futile given the number of varying processes within each department of HHS. The agency has five contract systems which can be hard to manage. Arrieta’s team layered these systems with a blockchain approach to pull all the data from the contracts and cleansed the data. While those contract systems are still operating, they have formed a platform and data layer to modernize business processes and create analytical insights to drive value for the people negotiating the contracts for HHS. Next, Arrieta and his team wireframed out the entire lifecycle of the acquisition process to make sure that they are only collecting information one time versus multiple times by prior applications.

His team also built an AI model using microservices that occur right off the data layer. This microservice uses natural language processing and machine learning to analyze prices paid and read through the terms and conditions of a contract. This allows for the model to quickly analyze these contracts and determine the range of the terms and prices. It is an incredibly powerful tool that is showing immediate savings – it’s able to perform work that would have taken humans several months of time in just a few seconds.

WHY USER BUY-IN IS SO IMPORTANT : Adoption of new technology doesn’t happen overnight, especially within the government. Additionally, employees can be very resistant to change and fear of new technologies. To increase buy-in, Arrieta and his team mapped out the business process and then looked for user buy-in to truly make the user experience better. They found it helped to pre-populate information that needed to be inputted by users to streamline the contract award process. All of this technology was only in testing at the time of this episode and a proof of concept.

Typical pushback to new technologies and processes can happen early on. When trying to get buy-in within the government discussions can quickly become a theoretical discussion around what you’re trying to do. This is challenging when trying to work across a large organization like HHS. The first thing to do is to include the culture in the process to support the workforce that they are targeting. You need to build a proof of concept to show people how it works. It’s all about building prototypes quickly and not just relying on discussing concepts to drive change. This will integrate the technology within the workplace culture to generate buy-in for those who have seen proposed technologies never work out. Because technology should align with the processes of the workforce and not the other way around. The technology should improve the business outcome with a rapidly built prototype that is supported by the workforce.

DATA AND PRIVACY CONCERNS : Data is at the heart of AI and in general the more data you have, the better. Data is what allows algorithms to “learn”. However, concerns about data usage and privacy are steadily growing. It’s no surprise then that there has been some pushback on AI and blockchain’s use of data when it comes to privacy. As a result, Arrieta and his team aren’t starting blockchain and AI-based projects where the data is most sensitive and where they need to be the most careful. They are starting with procurement to figure out how to be more efficient for the taxpayer by buying things in a better way. This area has a minimal privacy risk allowing the team to start in a more controlled environment to learn how the technology works. In procurement, this data is collected already so it’s more of a way to show and demonstrate a proof of concept.  It is important to look at better ways to protect data as so many bad actors are seeking this data. Arrieta advocates looking to these technologies to protect the data. Take the lessons learned from the projects with non-sensitive data and apply it to technologies for use with sensitive data.

When you look into the future, it is evolving in real-time right before our eyes. Every business model that exists in this world has the possibility to be transformed by AI and by blockchain. Many of these changes will first occur in the private sector but it will nonetheless transform governments because the applications sold to the government will involve the capabilities that benefit the private sector. There is no way to stop this advancement so it’s important to make sure that the government continues to learn these technological advancements to avoid falling behind. Individuals will be able to buy what they want and get the help they need. Imagine this data being applied to healthcare and other personalized areas of need. One of these long term visions of AI and blockchain as applied to healthcare is the evolution of hyper-personalized healthcare, which can have a profound impact on society.

Podcast


podcast courtesy cognilytica.com | originally posted on forbes.com by Kathleen Walch