Seattle-based global health nonprofit PATH is making inroads with new technology.
Earlier this month, PATH named Bilal Mateen, previously the executive director of Digital Square, as its first chief artificial intelligence officer. According to Mateen, part of his job is crystallizing what the role will entail.
"What we're trying to do is see a future where we've integrated enough knowledge about machine learning and artificial intelligence that it's a ground-up approach rather than needing a singular leader who is trying to pull the organization forward," Mateen said. "Success for me is in five years, I'm out of a job. There's no such thing as a chief AI officer at PATH, and there are enough people in the organization who know and can see the opportunity in their specific area."
Related coverage
Mateen added that PATH is already developing experiments to use AI in health care. One experiment involves taking the dialogue from a health care worker interaction with a patient, feeding that dialogue into a large language model and seeing if AI can determine whether the patient might need a specific referral. Another experiment involves training AI to help generate treatment plans based on patients' symptoms.
Mateen spent more than a year at Digital Square, a PATH-led initiative focused on advancing digital health tools. Before Digital Health, according to his LinkedIn page, he spent three years at Wellcome Trust, a health-care focused charitable foundation.
Mateen will remain based in London. Living in London is helpful for dealing with the many time zones in which PATH operates, Mateen said. PATH and Mateen are still deciding how many people will report to him, but he said he would like the team to be small and agile.
"If I am being honest about my vision that I'm trying to work myself out of a job, building this enormous, sprawling empire isn't the way to do it," Mateen said. "I don't think AI for the sake of AI is worth doing."
PATH launched in 1977. The nonprofit — one of the largest in the Puget Sound region by revenue, according to Business Journal research — focuses on solutions in product development, product access, disease management and bolstering the health care system. The nonprofit says it works in more than 70 countries and has immunized hundreds of millions of people. PATH reported $355.2 million in assets in its 2023 annual report.
For more stories like this one, sign up for Seattle Inno newsletters from the Puget Sound Business Journal and the American Inno network.
