It was no surprise that at AOHC 2026 artificial intelligence (AI) and related topics were top of mind for attendees. From panels discussing practical applications for AI in clinical settings to cybersecurity risks, occupational health practitioners and administrators were eager to learn more. And learn more, they must – and quickly, according to Enterprise Health’s Jeff Donnell. Donnell, along with occupational health clinical leader, Manijeh Berenji, MD MPH, and healthcare legal expert, Stephanie Eckerle, JD, explored the confluence of challenges brought by AI, cybersecurity risks, and digital privacy to occupational health.
Despite the uncertainties, complexities, and challenges brought by AI, Donnell cautioned that failing to engage with AI would bring far greater problems to occupational health practices. In comparison to other fields of endeavor, Donnell shared that occupational health is at risk of becoming a laggard industry if it doesn’t begin to integrate AI tools into both practice and administration. In lagging behind, occupational health could miss out on the inherent benefits and efficiency multipliers that come with even basic AI tools, applications, and integrations.
While it’s easy on paper, or at a panel, to make a use case for AI applications like ambient scribes that take notes during a patient encounter to deliver a better patient experience and reduce administrative time, the complexities pile up quickly. Dr. Manijeh Berenji, Assistant Clinical Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at UC Irvine, listed as many obstacles to AI integration and use in occupational health as she did use cases.
For every ambient scribe that enables a clinician to listen more fully to a patient, every medical image that can be triaged by AI, or every chatbot that helps schedule a flu vaccine appointment and keeps a workplace in compliance, there are real concerns around the absence of national regulations, the lack of understanding around ethical issues and discrimination, and most importantly over governance, privacy, and security for patients and their personal health information (PHI).
This is where the expertise and legal leadership of Stephanie Eckerle comes to the fore. Far from being deterred by the challenges AI has brought and will continue to bring to occupational health, Eckerle has lent her legal expertise to building frameworks that support governance models and bolstering data privacy and security. During her portion of the panel, Eckerle noted that in not thinking about the impacts of AI and in not understanding how AI is already being used within the company, even if not officially in a clinical setting, employers, medical providers, and employees are all assuming a far too great a level of risk.
Eckerle suggests that companies start with a survey to identify what AI tools are already being used by employees and occupational health providers. Without understanding shadow AI usage, it’s impossible to build a viable security and privacy framework. From there, Eckerle advises organizations to bring together stakeholders from across the organization. In the case of deploying AI tools in occupational health bringing together a broad coalition from legal, compliance, medical, human resources, IT, and third-party vendors brings a broad, multidimensional view of the challenges, risks, strengths and opportunities creating the best opportunity to establish meaningful and constructive guidance as occupational health teams look to integrate AI tools into clinical practice.
Today, we’ve only addressed the top layer of considerations that occupational health clinicians need to take into consideration as they implement AI into workflows and clinical care. But there is still a wide range of topics to cover from sources of governance to the emergent field of third-party AI certification. We’ll bring you those insights in the coming weeks.