Interim Plan on Responsible Use of AI in Health Care Due This Month

The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) interim strategic plan on the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in health care, due at the end of April, will focus on 4 areas, Micky Tripathi, co-chair of the task force charged with developing the plan, recently told The Washington Post.

The interim plan will consider uses for AI in public benefits and HHS activities, how to assess the quality of AI products, and ways to promote nondiscrimination compliance. It will also look at issues related to biosecurity for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), such as synthetic nucleic acid screening, according to Tripathi, who serves as the HHS national coordinator for health information technology.

President Biden mandated the creation of the plan in an executive order last year. The full strategic plan is due in October.

“Looking to October, we’ve got an overarching AI strategic plan that we’ve got to put together,” Tripathi said in the interview. “There’s a safety program we want to plan for. And then finally a strategy for regulating the use of AI in drug development, which the NIH and the Food and Drug Administration will be the primary leads on.”

The technology is advancing quickly in the health care arena. The US Food and Drug Administration has already approved hundreds of AI-enabled devices, most of which are in radiology. Another burgeoning area is user experience tools for administrative tasks, Tripathi said, such as helping physicians manage their email.

Regulatory guidance on AI tools needs to strike a balance between flexibility that leaves room for innovation and ensuring the powerful technology is used responsibly. Although the plan at this point focuses exclusively on using existing agencies and budgets, Tripathi said the need for new authority and resources seems unavoidable in the long run.

“What you see in the executive order are all things that we believe we can accomplish today. But a part of the task force mandate will be to identify where there are gaps and how to fill them in,” he told the newspaper.

Reference

Beard M. A conversation about the HHS plan on AI in health care. The Washington Post. March 18, 2024. Accessed April 17, 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/18/conversation-about-hhs-plan-ai-health-care/