AI is not a magic elixir. While it solves real-world problems, it involves layers of complexity, and challenges around system readiness, security, risk, and liability. Many organizations dive into AI without addressing foundational issues – a costly mistake.  We built the AI Evolution framework to ensure you can leverage AI with eyes wide open. Built on expertise and experience, the framework helps you develop your AI vision and capabilities in a controlled, measured way.

Our framework:

• SIMPLIFIES complexities of AI. It ensures your organization is well prepared to adopt, implement, and sustain AI-driven solutions
• CREATES buy-in within the organization, removing organizational siloes to ensure there’s alignment on how to execute and innovate using AI  
• GUIDES you through each stage of implementation and adoption so you are clear how to move forward
• SAVES YOU from common pitfalls that lead to exorbitant costs, meaningless results, or projects that go off the rails  

Success starts with preparation. Most organizations don’t realize that before you can leverage AI, you must have your data “ready,” which means you must have a great data strategy in place.

We use two tools, our MAP (Modern Analytics Platform) Data Strategy Framework and COMPASS (Comprehensive MAP Assessment) evaluation engagement to make sure you have all the pieces together. Here’s what we do:

• Evaluate your data, technology, infrastructure, systems, and stakeholders to see if your business is ready for AI
• Figure out what changes you must make before you can use AI successfully
• Create a roadmap on how to get to a point where you can leverage AI well
• Educate your stakeholders on AI and what they should do to prepare to use AI
• Identify areas where your company can get started using AI

Phase 2: AI POC, Training, and Development

When your data and systems are ready, we’ll help you choose a small-scale proof of concept (POC) to demonstrate AI’s value. This might be traditional machine learning or generative AI. By the end of this phase, we’ll integrate the AI models into your systems and processes to produce the outcomes you want.

Working together, we’ll:  

• Identify high-value opportunities where your business can integrate AI into your products or services to solve problems
• Decide if AI is possible AND financially feasible. Does AI bring enough value to pay for itself?
• Train people in your business to use AI and help fill in knowledge gaps
• Select AI models, prepare your data, choose algorithms, train and tune the model, and evaluate performance
• Validate the model by feeding it different types of clean, trustworthy data
• Ensure the training data and methodology align with your desired business outcomes and achieves the goals you set

Here’s where you transform your POC to a live solution. The AI models will be continuously trained, tested, optimized, and deployed so that they’ll continue to be effective when new variables enter the picture. We’ll:

• Identify gaps in the final POC performance and create a roadmap to continually test and refine the model, fill in gaps, optimize, then scale the deployment
• Use AI/ML best practices for deployment
• Support you through the entire lifecycle, from initial development (data collection, model development, model validation) to deployment (managing the model, monitoring, and performing maintenance, ongoing integration, and performance optimization)

Phase 4: AI Governance

It’s critical to use AI responsibly. We’ll help your organization build a governance framework for AI development and usage. Proper governance will address concerns like security, compliance, data privacy, and ethics. During this phase, you will:

• Set up an internal governance board or council for AI initiatives
• Establish policies and procedures on how AI will be used, such as policies to define acceptable use cases, mitigate bias, and ensure ethical treatment of data
• Manage risk by identifying and proactively addressing potential issues like privacy violations or unintended consequences
• Decide what policy enforcement will look like
• Create robust security measures to protect sensitive data and prevent malicious actors from exploiting vulnerabilities
• Educate all stakeholders to understand the capabilities and limitations of AI. This will foster responsible user adoption and maximize the benefits of AI usage

AI isn’t just technology that your company buys. It’s a transformative business function. Larger organizations currently use AI Centers of Excellence to help accelerate AI development and integration. And, in the future, every company will have an AI department or business function, just as IT or HR are business functions.  

Similarly, AI will impact and integrate with all aspects of your business and all other functions in the business.  

With that in mind, when you’re ready, we can help you:  

• Build an AI Center of Excellence to oversee AI initiatives, thinking holistically about the people, processes, and technology required
• Effectively grow, evolve, adapt, and leverage the benefits and opportunities of AI now and in the future
• Align AI efforts with business goals
• Foster innovation and scale AI across departments

Ready to turn your AI ambitions into reality?

A major healthcare system needed help optimizing patients coming into or being discharged from its multiple hospitals and surgical facilities in a timely manner. Turning over beds to make room for new patients and ensuring doctors patients in time is an organizational nightmare that all hospitals face.  

The problem sounds simple, but if a patient is discharged too late, their stay is extended for a day, and Medicare won’t pay. That single patient staying too long (counted as an extra night) costs the hospital thousands of dollars each night. Multiply that by numerous patients going in and out all different wards of each hospital day after day, and the losses become exorbitant.  

Using the framework, we were able to understand that problem boiled down to a traffic optimization problem. But AI innovation involves more than technology, so we followed the AI Evolution Framework to:

• Assess data, technology, infrastructure, organizational and system readiness, and then address gaps
• Develop a POC to optimize patient discharges using predictive analytics and an AI/ML Ops approach
• Scale the solution across all hospitals  
• Help the organization establish a governance model to ensure ethical AI use and address privacy, risk, and security concerns