UCSF Creates Executive Director of AI Monitoring in Clinical Care Role

The profusion of artificial intelligence tools in clinical practice is leading to the development of new health system roles such as the chief health AI officer. In one such move, the University of California San Francisco has named an inaugural executive director of AI monitoring in clinical care.

In this new role within the Division of Clinical Informatics and Digital Transformation (DoC-IT), Jinoos Yazdany, M.D., M.P.H., will spearhead the development of the foundational components of the Impact Monitoring Platform for Clinical Care (IMPACC), a real-time AI monitoring platform designed to continuously evaluate the efficacy, safety, fairness, and overall value of AI tools deployed at UCSF Health. A central focus of her role will also be to expand access to data on AI implementations, ensuring that UCSF’s research community can leverage these data to drive innovative research.

Yazdany serves as chief of the Division of Rheumatology at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (ZSFG) and is the UCSF Alice Betts Endowed Professor of Medicine. As a rheumatologist specializing in systemic lupus, she practices at ZSFG and co-directs the UCSF Health Lupus Clinic.

In her new role, she will work closely with Sara Murray, M.D., UCSF’s chief health AI officer; Julia Adler-Milstein, Ph.D., chief of DoC-IT; and Hossein Soleimani, Ph.D., senior data scientist.

“AI is no longer just hype—it's fundamentally transforming the way we deliver healthcare,” Yazdany said in a statement. “For example, the AI scribe I use in the clinic feels like a leap forward, freeing me from my keyboard so I can be fully present with my patients. What excites me most is ensuring we strategically deploy AI tools and evaluate whether they improve patient outcomes and increase the joy of practicing medicine.”

As AI becomes more deeply embedded in healthcare, we must take an active approach to monitoring,”  she added. “IMPACC will be essential to ensuring these technologies are not only safe but also fair and truly beneficial for both patients and our health system. Our team aims to set the gold standard for AI oversight, ensuring these tools earn our trust and truly enhance patient care.”

In the near term, UCSF said IMPACC will deploy robust, readily implementable metrics to ensure AI tools are safe and effective, while simultaneously building a research pipeline to pioneer new monitoring approaches. Beyond UCSF, the open-source AI-monitoring metrics developed by the IMPACC team will enable institutions nationwide to learn from and tailor evidence-based strategies to their own needs.