Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming healthcare, offering unprecedented opportunities to improve diagnostics, personalize treatments, and streamline operations.

Yet as hospitals across the nation integrate these powerful technologies into their care delivery systems, a critical question emerges: How do you balance innovation with the trust that families place in their children’s healthcare providers?

At Valley Children’s Hospital in California’s Central Valley, this question shapes every aspect of AI implementation. Under the leadership of President and CEO Todd Suntrapak, Valley Children’s has established itself as one of the earliest adopters of AI technology in pediatrics while maintaining its unwavering commitment to patient safety and family-centered care.

The Trust Gap in Healthcare AI

The statistics reveal a significant challenge. Research published by Pew Research Center found that 60% of U.S. adults feel uncomfortable if their healthcare provider relied on artificial intelligence to diagnose diseases and recommend treatments.

More recent data indicate the concern runs deeper. Almost 70% of adults surveyed had low trust in their healthcare system to use AI responsibly, and even fewer had low trust that their healthcare systems would protect them from AI-related harm.

You might wonder what’s driving this unease. Three-quarters of adults worry that providers will implement AI too quickly before fully understanding the risks for patients, while 37% fear that using AI would worsen the security of healthcare records.

Additionally, over 60% of healthcare professionals themselves express hesitation in adopting AI systems due to lack of transparency and concerns about data security.

Valley Children’s Approach: Thoughtful Implementation with Clinical Oversight

Valley Children’s recognizes that earning trust requires more than just implementing cutting-edge technology. It demands transparency, rigorous oversight, and a commitment to keeping clinicians at the center of every decision.

Dr. Michael Scahill, medical director of physician informatics and digital health at Valley Children’s, exemplifies this balanced approach. As a pediatrician and the hospital’s clinical decision-maker on technology questions, Dr. Scahill brings a unique perspective to AI implementation. His dual role as a halftime hospitalist ensures that every technological decision is grounded in real-world clinical experience.

The hospital’s AI initiatives focus on areas where technology can enhance care without replacing the human touch:

Ambient Documentation Technology

One of Valley Children’s most successful AI applications involves ambient documentation, which is a technology that listens in the background during patient appointments and automatically generates clinical notes. This innovation directly addresses physician burnout caused by excessive documentation requirements.

“It’s very challenging for them to keep up with documentation, do their notes, order things while they’re seeing the patient and still maintain that interaction,” Dr. Scahill explained to Healthcare IT News. The results speak for themselves. Physicians who have tested the ambient technology “absolutely love it,” he noted. Even Suntrapak praised the system’s impact.

As Dr. Scahill pointedly observed, “Nobody likes seeing a doctor whose back is to them while they’re typing.” By freeing physicians from their computers, AI lets them restore meaningful connection with young patients and their families, which is exactly the kind of interaction that builds trust.

Rare Disease Collaboration and Genomic Medicine

Valley Children’s uses Epic Cosmos, a platform that analyzes medical data across electronic health records nationwide, to identify colleagues with experience treating rare conditions such as phenylketonuria (PKU). This transforms nationwide EHR data into a practical directory of expertise without exposing patient identities.

The challenge is particularly acute in pediatrics. With approximately 5% of hospitalizations in the United States involving children, there is significantly less data available to train AI models compared to adult medicine. Valley Children’s addresses this through collaboration, connecting pediatricians in California’s Central Valley with specialists nationwide.

The hospital also deploys AI to analyze genomic data and guide therapy selection. With thousands of medications and countless gene-drug interactions to consider, the hospital’s AI systems route whole-genome sequencing results into decision support tools that alert prescribers about optimal dosing while physicians make the final treatment decisions.

Administrative Efficiency

Valley Children’s uses AI to streamline administrative processes, working with Epic on AI-driven patient histories that handle structured intake questions and populate the medical record automatically.

This reduces busywork for families and improves data quality before clinicians enter the exam room.

Guidelines for Safe AI Deployment

Valley Children’s success offers valuable lessons for healthcare organizations. Based on guidance from the Joint Commission and Coalition for Health AI, as well as research on AI safety in healthcare, here are key principles:

  • Establish robust governance. Every healthcare organization implementing AI needs clear policies and governance structures with oversight from executive leadership, clinical experts, IT specialists, and patient safety teams. You need to know who owns each AI implementation, who monitors its performance and who has authority to shut down a system if problems emerge.
  • Maintain clinical oversight. AI should augment rather than replace clinical judgment. Healthcare organizations should require that physicians maintain final decision-making authority when AI is used for diagnosis or treatment recommendations.
  • Implement rigorous testing. Organizations must conduct thorough testing using representative patient populations. Post-deployment monitoring is equally critical, with ongoing validation using a risk-based approach.
  • Address bias and ensure equity. AI systems can perpetuate existing healthcare disparities if trained on non-representative data sets. Organizations must establish processes to identify and address biases, gathering detailed information from vendors about testing and validation.
  • Prioritize transparency. Healthcare organizations should develop mechanisms to disclose and educate patients and families about AI use. Research confirms 65% of patients would be more comfortable if their physicians explained how they use AI in medicine.
  • Enable continuous monitoring. Organizations must move from static to dynamic models of safety assurance, continuously collecting data about AI system performance and updating risk assessments based on actual clinical practice.

Addressing Parental Concerns

If you’re a parent, your concerns about AI in your child’s healthcare are valid. Here’s what you should know:

  • Will AI replace my child’s doctor? No. AI implementations at Valley Children’s are designed to enhance physician capabilities rather than replace them. Your child’s physician remains in charge of all medical decisions.
  • How do I know the AI is accurate? Healthcare AI systems undergo rigorous testing before deployment. At Valley Children’s, AI tools are continuously monitored, and physicians review AI-generated insights before using them in clinical decisions.
  • Will AI have access to my child’s private health information? Valley Children’s maintains strict privacy protections for all patient data, following HIPAA regulations and implementing additional safeguards.
  • How will I know if AI is being used? Leading hospitals like Valley Children’s are committed to transparency. Your child’s care team should proactively inform you when AI tools are part of the diagnostic or treatment process.

Building Trust Through Results

Valley Children’s experience demonstrates that healthcare organizations can successfully implement AI while maintaining patient and family trust. Under Suntrapak’s leadership, Valley Children’s has grown into a comprehensive delivery network serving 1.3 million children across California’s Central Valley.

The hospital’s recognition as a Top Children’s Hospital by The Leapfrog Group for the sixth time, placing it among only eight children’s hospitals nationwide to receive this honor, demonstrates that technological innovation and quality patient care are complementary goals.

As Dr. Scahill noted, his goal is parity: “Kids here deserve the same care that kids in Palo Alto get.” AI is one of the tools helping stretch clinical capacity and expertise across wide geography, ensuring that children in the Central Valley have access to specialized care available in major metropolitan areas.

For families, the message is clear: AI in pediatric healthcare isn’t something to fear but something to understand. When hospitals prioritize transparency, maintain rigorous clinical oversight, and continuously monitor AI systems for safety and accuracy, these technologies can significantly improve the care your children receive.

Valley Children’s Hospital demonstrates that the apparent tension between innovation and trust is resolvable. Through thoughtful governance, continuous monitoring, transparent communication, and unwavering commitment to clinical oversight, healthcare organizations can harness AI’s transformative potential while honoring the sacred trust that families place in those who care for their children.