SickKids Artificial Intelligence

SickKids Artificial Intelligence (SKAI) is an enterprise AI program designed to ensure AI systems impacting patients, families, and staff are developed, deployed, and scaled responsibly at SickKids.

Artificial intelligence has transformative potential in health care, offering new ways to enhance patient care, streamline hospital operations, reduce administrative burden and drive medical discoveries. SickKids is committed to ensuring AI is used safely, ethically and effectively for the benefit of patients, families and staff.

SKAI brings together clinicians, scientists and staff to explore and implement AI systems that improve care, enhance discovery, and support learning. It has three major components: an in-house service to support AI systems intended for deployment, a research arm where scientists are using AI to accelerate discovery, and a community-building element that includes widespread AI literacy and knowledge sharing.

We prioritize designing AI solutions that enhance the experiences of patients, caregivers, and health-care professionals, optimize outcomes and ensure that technology is built to solve real problems while advancing our mission. Our commitment to safety and ethics ensures that AI technologies are implemented responsibly, aligning with the highest standards of fairness, transparency, and trustworthiness.

Ensuring AI is used responsibly: SKAI Service

To ensure AI is used safely and effectively, SickKids has established the SKAI Service—one of the most comprehensive health-care AI services in Canada. It provides the expertise and oversight needed to develop, assess, monitor and scale AI systems intended for deployment where it matters most—at the point of impact for families and staff.

The SKAI Service plays a critical role in:

• Providing oversight for safe and ethical AI deployment in clinical care and clinical or business operations
• Offering development support to help teams implement AI systems efficiently
• Supporting responsible innovation by guiding the development, adoption and use of AI across the hospital

An Adoption of AI Systems Policy at SickKids requires that all AI systems intended for clinical care, clinical operations or business operations—whether developed in-house or by third-party sources—must undergo assessment by the SKAI Service before they can be used. This ensures AI is implemented and advanced in alignment with responsible AI principles.