The Indian Health Service (IHS) is turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to support both its healthcare and cybersecurity operations, including integrating AI-powered transcription into patient care as it rolls out a new electronic health record (EHR) system.
Speaking at the Splunk GovSummit in Washington, IHS Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Benjamin Koshy said AI-driven transcription capabilities will improve clinician-patient interactions.
“Normally, when you go to a doctor’s office, and you’re talking to the physician, they sometimes sit facing a computer” to take notes, Koshy said on Wednesday.
Now, IHS is working toward an environment where, with the patient’s consent, the interaction can be recorded on a government-approved device. This allows the doctor to give the patient their full attention, Koshy explained.
“It makes the patient interaction a lot easier. You get to make eye contact with the physician and have a meaningful conversation without them having to look left and right and having to type,” Koshy said.
Importantly, Koshy stressed that clinicians will remain fully accountable for the final record.
“We remind the patient, just because the AI wrote it, we’re not going to blindly accept it. At the end of the day, the doctor looks at it and reads it, hits the accept button, and [their] name is attached to the note,” he said.
Alongside clinical applications, IHS is exploring AI to bolster cybersecurity operations. Koshy framed security as inseparable from healthcare delivery, particularly as digital systems become more central to patient care.
“From a security standpoint, we want to have a widespread understanding that for IHS, cybersecurity is patient safety,” he said. “You can’t have one without the other, especially in the healthcare environment.”
To support that posture, Koshy said the agency is looking to leverage AI tools to automate labor-intensive cybersecurity tasks such as log analysis. Automating those processes could allow security teams to focus on higher-value analysis and incident response.
The CISO added that IHS is marketing the technology as an additional tool for employees to leverage and is encouraging adoption across both clinical and cybersecurity domains.
“We made it very clear: It’s just another tool that we want you to learn to use. I’d rather have an analyst who’s well-versed in AI versus an analyst who avoids it,” Koshy said.