‘Behind the Times’: Washington Tries to Catch Up With AI’s Use in Health Care

California Healthline February 13, 2024
Darius Tahir

Lawmakers and regulators in Washington are starting to puzzle over how to regulate artificial intelligence in health care — and the AI industry thinks there’s a good chance they’ll mess it up.

“It’s an incredibly daunting problem,” said Bob Wachter, the chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California-San Francisco. “There’s a risk we come in with guns blazing and overregulate.”

Already, AI’s impact on health care is widespread. The Food and Drug Administration has approved some 692 AI products. Algorithms are helping to schedule patients, determine staffing levels in emergency rooms, and even transcribe and summarize clinical visits to save physicians’ time. They’re starting to help radiologists read MRIs and X-rays. Wachter said he sometimes informally...

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