This audio is automatically generated. Please let us know if you have any comments.
Diving brief:
- HHS is ask the health sector how the department could help accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence in the sector, including in clinical care.
- THE request for informationreleased Friday, seeks information on how HHS could use its authorities to improve patient and caregiver experiences and outcomes, reduce provider burden, improve quality of care, and reduce health care costs.
- The department is also seeking details on steps it could take to accelerate the implementation of technology in clinical care. The RFI asks how digital health and software regulations should change to include AI tools, how the department could simplify payments to encourage use of the technology, and what research and development investments could offer best practices to adopt.
Dive overview:
The RFI, issued by the Office of the Assistant Secretary and Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS, builds on other actions by the Trump Administration to strengthen AI implementation across the country, including HHS’s recently released strategy for deploying the tools within the agency.
The Trump administration has largely taken a deregulatory stance toward AI, arguing that onerous rules could hinder the development and deployment of this potentially transformative technology. For example, President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this month aimed at challenging some domestic AI laws.
But that posture has left the healthcare industry with limited federal oversight to manage the deployment of AI tools, which could be dangerous to patient care if not implemented carefully. Incorrect or misleading information, biased data used to train models, and degradation of AI performance over time can create challenges for deployment in the healthcare sector.
So many health systems have focused their AI deployments on tools to assist with back-office or administrative tasks — like revenue cycle management, processing prior authorization requests, or clinical documentation — in part because those areas seem less risky, experts say.
HHS is now seeking information on how the department could contribute to the adoption of technology in clinical care. The agency wants create a regulatory environment that is “well-understood, predictable, and proportionate to all risks” to foster rapid innovation while protecting patients and their health data, HHS said in the RFI.
The Department is also requesting comment on how it could modify the reimbursement policy to ensure that payers can promote access to AI clinical interventions, foster competition among AI companies, and improve access and affordability of AI tools.
Additionally, HHS is seeking information on how the department can invest in research to drive AI adoption, including through public-private partnerships and cooperative research agreements.
The department is particularly interested in comments from those creating AI tools for clinical settings, organizations purchasing or implementing the tools, as well as those who want to use AI but face barriers to access, wrote Steven Posnack, principal assistant secretary for technology policy at ASTP, in a blog post.
Comments are due 60 days after publication of the RFI in the Federal Register on December 23.
