Ram Iyer, chief data officer at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said FDA embeds artificial intelligence into its overall data strategy as the agency sees opportunities to use AI and data in its core operations.
Iyer told Beena Ammanath, executive director of the Deloitte AI Institute, in an interview published Wednesday on The Wall Street Journal about the factors FDA considers when it comes to building an AI-ready workforce.
“When it comes to developing an AI-ready workforce, we want people who keep user needs in front of the design, not as an afterthought. We will even train people on how to ask good questions,” Iyer said.
He also highlighted the importance of establishing trust and emphasizing ease of use when it comes to AI.
“AI relies on the readiness of data, the feature selection, the user experience, and the operationalization of the entire function. Keeping these factors in mind, at the FDA we run experiments and constantly improve,” he noted.
Iyer also discussed the agency’s Data Modernization Action Plan and its three pillars: driver projects, data practices and the right talent.
