The 16-hospital health system, OSF HealthCare, based in Peoria, Illinois, has made it mandatory for all 24,000 employees to undergo training. It has a deliberate strategy to ensure that everyone from the janitor to the CEO is aware of the generative power of AI.
PROBLEM
Adopting generative AI as quickly as possible is critical for OSF HealthCare. Like all nonprofit health systems across the country, it operates on razor-thin operating margins, with workforce shortages expected to persist for at least the next decade. In addition, physicians are still recovering from COVID-19 and facing burnout due to increased administrative burdens.
“We need to look for every opportunity to improve efficiency, productivity, and work smarter with the resources we have,” said Melissa Knuth, vice president of planning at OSF HealthCare. “We’ve all read about the great promise of generative AI to transform healthcare, but getting to that future state is a challenge. We need the power of the entire workforce pushing on the same side of the rock to reap the rewards.
“While we understood that our education in generative AI needed to be mandatory across our healthcare system, we also understood that people have short attention spans,” she continued. “Traditional education methods weren’t going to cut it. We have a diverse knowledge base across our workforce, and we needed to provide education to everyone from delivery drivers and housekeepers to surgeons.”
The healthcare system has also set an aggressive timeline for completing education—around six weeks, due to the prevalence and public availability of generative AI tools.
“We knew people in our workforce were using these tools personally and in the workplace,” she said. “We needed to make sure they understood the organizational principles around using generative AI tools at OSF HealthCare. We wanted to educate them about the potential benefits and potential pitfalls to avoid.
“To address the challenge before us, we took lessons from social media on how to grab someone’s attention and hold it for short bursts of time (1-2 minutes) to convey our key messages,” she continued. “We used mixed media to keep content engaging and used generative AI tools to help create content.”
APPLICATION
OSF HealthCare knew the first lessons it needed to learn to focus on establishing a foundation of AI knowledge across the organization, so it created the “Getting to Know Generative AI” course to build everyone’s understanding of generative AI. The organization needed to get everyone on the same page, but it had to be fun and engaging because it was going to be mandatory training for the entire workforce, Knuth said.
“To stay true to the guidelines we set and our vision for this education, we created content that was broken down into sections,” she explained. “If any of you are reformed coders in a previous life, this is similar in concept to creating containers of code that can be put together to create one or more programs.
“We created content components that were subsets of the whole, but we needed something to connect them in a coherent way—like scaffolding to give them structure,” she added. “We used Articulate Rise software to achieve this. Our components included interactive elements, visuals, videos, and text content to create a flow, many of which were created using generative AI tools.”
It was crucial to create engaging content that would hold the attention of an increasingly distracted audience with tiny attention spans. The health system also made clear that OSF HealthCare is committed to innovation, which requires continuous learning for all employees.
“OSF’s vision is to harness the power of generative AI to promote exploration, use, and implementation to optimize healthcare delivery, empower healthcare professionals, and improve patient experiences across our healthcare system,” Knuth said.
After presenting the vision, she noted that key messages included:
- When starting to operate these tools, remember that they are not perfect – it is crucial to verify the results obtained.
- These tools may provide false and misleading information and the user must evaluate the value of the information they receive.
- If you operate these tools as part of your work at OSF, never copy and paste protected patient information into an AI-based generative tool that has not been approved for such operate.
MET THE CHALLENGE
OSF strategically implemented customized learning for all 24,000 employees. One version was aimed at leaders and suppliers, and the organization created a different version for all other roles.
“This allowed us to tailor messaging and education levels to both groups,” Knuth explained. “We implemented a first round of mandatory education across the workforce in January/February 2024, along with a tiny survey that allowed us to understand the impact of education.
“We have an internally designed platform called Corporate University that houses a module that can be completed in about 15 minutes,” she continued. “It’s not connected to Epic, but it’s available on the OSF website’s employee portal. All employees receive email notifications of mandatory training and follow-up emails if it’s not completed by the deadline.”
The content includes tiny quizzes to check understanding of the material.
RESULTS
Shana Freehill, DNP, nurse, manager of education and professional development at OSF HealthCare, said 78.75% of all OSF employees completed the required training, 74% of those said it increased their knowledge of the topic, and 65% said the educational activities provided them with content relevant to their role.
“If we take 24,000 employees, the completion rate is high at 78.75 percent,” she noted. “Seventy-four percent indicated that the content expanded their knowledge of the subject matter, and 65 percent felt that the content was relevant to their role, which shows that the education was solid and well-developed.”
“It takes creativity to develop meaningful education for such a broad audience, taking into account clinical and non-clinical roles and different areas of work across the ministry,” she added.
ADVICE FOR OTHERS
According to Harvard Business Review, ChatGPT is one of the most widely adopted and fastest-adopted products in history. Just two months after launch, it had 100 million users. It took Instagram two and a half years to get that many users. Facebook took four and a half years.
The faster technology spreads, the less time users have to learn from each other and imitate usage patterns, so it’s crucial for everyone to know the expectations and guidelines and have a basic understanding of them, Knuth said.
“You need to recognize that you’re going to need to engage in ongoing training because the most advanced AI-based tools are going to change and there may be new features and new use cases, so just recognize that this is something that you need to review and prepare for by initiating new training as needed,” she advised.
“As with any educational effort, understand your audience and where they’re starting on a topic,” she continued. “Think about how people regularly seek out and receive information today and try to understand why it works, why it’s effective. Consider these important lessons when designing your education—both in approach and content.”
She added that generative artificial intelligence is an captivating and engaging topic.
“The educational approach and content should be innovative, different, and feel new,” she recommended. “Apply generative AI tools to create content, and make sure your learners understand which parts of the learning module were created using generative AI tools—videos, visualizations, key messages, etc. Transparency is an crucial feature of ethical operate of generative AI, so it should be included in the training content.
“At OSF HealthCare, we’ve also created a tool called Prompt Buddy, a free app that will also be available in Microsoft Teams, which most employees use every day,” she concluded. “It’s a way for us to crowdsource some of the best prompts that have proven helpful, so employees can learn from each other about what works. We’ll probably include in future training how to best use and contribute to Prompt Buddy.”
The HIMSS AI in Healthcare Forum will be held September 5-6 in Boston. Learn more and register.