Choosing a clinical AI tool: a physician’s first-pass checklist

Start with a one-sentence use case

Write the workflow in plain language: who will use the system, what information they will provide, what output they expect, and what happens next. If the sentence ends with ‘and then the AI decides,’ the review is not ready.

This framing keeps a demo from expanding into an undefined clinical deployment. It also gives privacy, security, compliance, and clinical leaders the same object to review.

• Who uses it?
• What data enters?
• Who reviews the output?
• Where does the final work live?

Interrogate the contract and product boundary

Ask which exact product, workspace, features, connectors, and retention settings are covered by the proposed agreement. A vendor may offer a BAA for some services and not others. The contract should match the configuration people will actually use.

Request a clear data-flow explanation, subcontractor responsibilities, access controls, incident terms, deletion behavior, and a path for account termination. Treat vague answers as an unresolved item, not an implied yes.

Test reviewability

A credible pilot measures how easily a qualified reviewer can detect and correct problems. Use representative but appropriately controlled examples, define expected results, and record failure modes rather than collecting only impressive outputs.

Reviewers should be able to trace important claims back to approved sources. A polished paragraph without provenance can increase work rather than reduce it.

• Accuracy and completeness
• Unsupported assertions
• Bias or omitted context
• Time to verify and correct

Compliance is a workflow, not a label

A product name, model name, or marketing page cannot make a healthcare workflow compliant by itself. The organization using the tool still has to determine whether HIPAA applies, understand what information enters the system, document permitted uses, configure access, train its workforce, and manage risk.

For a cloud service that creates, receives, maintains, or transmits electronic protected health information on behalf of a covered entity or business associate, HHS guidance centers the business associate agreement and the regulated organization’s own risk analysis. Those are operational responsibilities, not badges that can be inferred from a homepage.

• Identify the data before selecting the tool
• Confirm the contract and covered services
• Document access, retention, review, and incident handling

Keep the human decision visible

Generative output can be fluent and still be incomplete, outdated, or wrong. A useful implementation names who reviews the output, what they compare it against, which changes they must make, and where the approved final record lives.

Human review should be proportionate to the consequence of error. A draft staff announcement and a patient-specific clinical recommendation do not belong in the same review lane. High-consequence decisions require qualified professional judgment and authoritative sources.

A review table for the team