CHAI PULSE initiative launches to test generative AI in public health
CHAI says PULSE will help public health agencies test generative AI across five use cases with support from Accenture, OpenAI and Anthropic.
By Rafael Ortiz · Fintech Correspondent
· 3 min read
The Coalition for Health AI has launched the CHAI PULSE initiative, a national program intended to help public health agencies assess, use and expand generative AI tools. CHAI said the effort will pair selected public health entities with Accenture experts and donated enterprise access from OpenAI and Anthropic, giving practitioners a structured route to test the technology in operational settings.
CHAI, a nonprofit founded by clinicians to advance responsible health artificial intelligence, announced PULSE in a July 16 press release. The acronym stands for Public health Use case and Learning Scaling Engine.
Under the program, CHAI’s leadership council will choose participating entities and assign people to their preferred use cases, according to the organization. Accenture experts will work with participants to create playbooks intended to serve as best-practice guides for other jurisdictions.
What is the CHAI PULSE initiative?
PULSE is designed as a national testing and learning program for generative AI in public health. Rather than treating AI adoption as a single software purchase, the initiative focuses on defined use cases, governance, user experience and repeatable implementation guides that other public agencies can draw on.
CHAI said the program covers five public health applications:
- Biosurveillance: Drug Wave Prediction
- Social Determinants of Health: SDoH Mapping
- Operations and Efficiency: Community Feedback Analysis
- Public Communications: Multilingual Translation Hub
- Automated Clinical Data Retrieval: FHIR Query Engine
Brian Anderson, CHAI’s chief executive, said in the release that PULSE is meant to help public health agencies develop trust, practical experience and a responsible path for using generative AI. He said the initiative gives organizations a way to share lessons from real-world use of leading AI tools and to support broader public health adoption.
OpenAI and Anthropic are supporting the program by donating 10 enterprise licenses that provide up to 2,000 seats for public health practitioners, CHAI said. Enterprise licenses typically give organizations managed access to AI tools, with controls intended for institutional use rather than consumer experimentation.
Felipe Millon, OpenAI’s head of government go to market, said in the release that the company’s licenses are intended to help public health organizations evaluate AI tools in a structured and responsible way. Elizabeth Kelly, Anthropic’s head of beneficial deployments, said PULSE allows practitioners to test the tools in their own environments with privacy, governance and responsible use addressed from the outset.
The launch follows a series of governance and implementation materials from CHAI. The organization named Anderson as its first CEO and appointed its inaugural board in March 2024. It later released guidance on responsible AI use in healthcare, a patient survey report on health AI and transparency, best-practice guides for AI deployment in Medicaid eligibility workflows, and playbooks for health system AI implementation.
A PYMNTS Intelligence report found that common healthcare AI use cases include customer service chatbots, workforce planning and skills-gap analysis, model development and training, and logistics routing and delivery optimization.
This story draws on original reporting from PYMNTS.
