Policy & Regulations

This channel includes news coverage of healthcare policy and regulations set by Congress, the states, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and medical associations and societies. 

california usa

Healthcare AI newswatch: California AI hoping, the jagged AI frontier, agents bumping off bots, more

California has moved assertively to legislate guardrails around AI in healthcare. Will other states follow? 

agentic AI agents in healthcare

Next-generation AI agents are headed for healthcare. What will they do once they get here?

Healthcare AI agents can be classified as one of four models. In increasing order of autonomy and clinical integration, these are: foundation, assistant, partner and pioneer. 

health insurance AI controversy

Healthcare AI newswatch: Payer AI regulation please, pharmacy AI, nurses v. AI redux

Unionized nurses: ‘AI overrides our expertise and degrades the quality of care.’ 

artificial intelligence AI in healthcare equity equality disparities

Will AI help or hurt the cause of healthcare equality?

AI has a long way to go before it meaningfully closes disparities in healthcare access and delivery. In fact, even when aimed at that goal, the technology can backfire. 

artificial intelligence AI in healthcare

What federal regulators can learn from the states about AI oversight

If the Trump administration continues taking a laissez-faire stance toward AI—including AI used in healthcare—why not let the states go it alone on regulating the technology? 

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Healthcare AI newswatch: AI-armed patients vs. big medical bills, Trump-era healthcare AI, patient safety anxieties, more

It’s no surprise Trump Administration II is taking a laissez-faire stance toward AI regulation. After all, the winning candidate campaigned pretty hard on scaling back all regulation. 

artificial intelligence ai in healthcare

To tell or not to tell: Do patients really need to know who—or what—writes their doctor’s notes?

When blinded as to authorship, healthcare consumers slightly prefer medical messages composed by generative AI to those written by human clinicians. 

Artificial intelligence AI in healthcare news

Healthcare AI newswatch: Regulatory sparring partners, AI nutrition labels, agentic AI basics, more

Medical device companies navigating regulatory pathways should know: Large language models are not reliable guides. 

Around the web

U.S. health systems are increasingly leveraging digital health to conduct their operations, but how health systems are using digital health in their strategies can vary widely.

When human counselors are unavailable to provide work-based wellness coaching, robots can substitute—as long as the workers are comfortable with emerging technologies and the machines aren’t overly humanlike.

A vendor that supplies EHR software to public health agencies is partnering with a health-tech startup in the cloud-communications space to equip state and local governments for managing their response to the COVID-19 crisis.