Priority area 7: Industry

Establish NSW Health as a global leader in AI

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Healthcare AI is essential for driving innovation, improving health outcomes and ensuring global leadership.

By fostering collaboration with industry, protecting data access and aligning with healthcare needs, we can create an environment where innovation and AI systems are relevant and meet ethical, legal and operational standards.

Principles

Partnerships with purpose

Ensure industry partnerships align with NSW Health CORE values, and prioritise the protection of individual and community rights.

  • Encourage transparent partnerships across NSW Health entities, government, industry, academia and non-government organisations.
  • Promote collaborations that are consumer-centred, ethically designed and address real-world need.
  • Promote co-design of AI systems with input from consumers and personnel.
  • Advocate for relevant and valuable AI systems that enhance equity.

Safeguard data access

Facilitate ethical and consent-based access to clinical data for AI development.

  • Recognise data sharing contributes to quality training of AI systems.
  • Prioritise security and privacy for safe and legal data sharing.
  • Value clear consent mechanisms to protect consumer rights.

Policy and guidance

Below are the key considerations for integrating AI, along with current policies and guidance that outline healthcare and technology obligations around collaborating with industry.

Topic Current policies and guidance
Intellectual property

NSW Health Commercialisation Framework
Provides accessible information to NSW Health employees engaged in the commercialisation of intellectual property.
Source: NSW Office for Health and Medical Research

Intellectual Property Arising from Health Research (PD2023_007)
Outlines the obligations of public health organisations and employees regarding intellectual property arising from health research.
Source: NSW Health

Procurement standards

AI Procurement Essentials
Provides guidance around the safe and effective procurement of AI.
Source: Buy NSW

NSW Health Procurement (Goods and Services) Policy (PD2024_044)
Outlines the principles and processes that NSW Health agencies must apply when procuring or disposing of goods or services, and managing the resulting contracts.
Source: NSW Health

Practice

Practice areasConsiderations
Data access and ownership
  • Develop mechanisms to allow legal, ethical and consent-based access to de-identified data for industry to support AI development
  • Define who owns the data and models
  • Determine whether the developer has the appropriate rights to use the training data, or seek appropriate contractual warranties
  • Determine if the software developer seeks to use NSW Health data to train its AI system, what controls are required, and whether the appropriate legal and privacy settings are in place to enable this
AI development and implementation
  • Create a statewide database of AI systems to assist NSW Health entities evaluate and select AI systems
  • Support AI developers in proving AI systems’ effectiveness before wide-scale implementation in clinical settings
  • Provide support resources and incentives where needed to ensure local industry is competitive, nationally and internationally
  • Develop best-practice industry standards for AI developers and users to comply with regulatory and legislative requirements

Challenges and opportunities

Sharing data for training AI models and supporting small and medium enterprises in bringing AI systems to market may help to drive efficiency and suitability of AI systems in a real-world healthcare setting. However, this needs to be done in line with ethical and legal considerations.

Purposeful and well-designed partnerships between NSW Health entities, government, industry, academia and non-profit organisations will position NSW Health as a leader in AI-enabled healthcare by showcasing proven solutions.

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