Governance of AI applications in health service organisations

Start Date

19 October 2023

End Date

26 March 2025

Project Participants

Alfred Health, Macquarie University

Status: Completed

Tags: accelerating adoption, acute care, AI governance, artificial intelligence (AI), clinical governance, health system, healthcare data, hospital, innovation, maturity model, organisational capability, responsible AI, workforce

Opportunity 

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have great potential to improve healthcare delivery, patient outcomes, and operational efficiency. However adoption in Australian health services remains slow, with one of the main challenges being a lack of practical, health service-level guidance for governing the safe, ethical and responsible use of AI across clinical, operational and research settings. Such governance is critical for safe and effective deployment but also to foster clinician trust that leads to meaningful adoption. 

Existing AI ethics frameworks have been largely theoretical and difficult to operationalise within complex healthcare environments. This project addressed this by developing and testing a practical governance framework and AI maturity model within a leading Australian health service in collaboration with Macquarie University, Alfred Health and the Digital Health CRC (DHCRC). 

Project Objectives  

The project aimed to: 

  • Identify and confirm requirements for AI governance within a particular health service 
  • Review national and international AI governance frameworks and maturity models 
  • Develop an AI governance framework and maturity model for health services 
  • Test the AI governance framework and maturity model using real-world AI applications at Alfred Health 
  • Refine the AI governance framework and maturity model and provide recommendations for implementation at Alfred Health, view a view to scaling across more Australian health services.  

The project successfully delivered a comprehensive AI Governance Framework for Australian health services with a practical Checklist tool, and an AI Maturity Model. The AI Governance framework and tool was validated through real-world case studies assessing clinical imaging AI, infectious disease surveillance and hospital-at-home eligibility assessment tools. Through extensive stakeholder consultation, including with health executives, clinicians, and technical and policy leaders, the project also made implementation recommendations toward establishing governance committees, and revising operational processes and oversight structures within a health service towards safer governance and accelerated adoption of AI.

This research provides one of Australia’s most comprehensive evidence-based approaches to governing AI at the health service level. The framework is supporting Alfred Health to adopt AI safely and responsibly while balancing innovation, patient safety, ethical considerations and operational efficiency. It can also provide a foundation for future AI governance practices nationally, and a second project is applying and further refining the framework and maturity at a health service in NSW.  

The Victorian Department of Health has endorsed the outputs of this research and has made the Checklist tool and supporting guidance available to Victorian Public Health Services, encouraging them to use it to inform implementation planning, identify capability gaps, and guide investment and workforce development priorities. 

The framework is also being used to inform the Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Healthcare (ACSQHC) AI guidance for healthcare organisations. 

Integrity, Excellence,
Teamwork and Authenticity

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