Tapping Into AI’s Potential for Supporting Great Patient Care

Every day, we see more headlines and examples highlighting the impact of artificial intelligence on our lives. As with many transformational technologies, people find cause for both optimism and caution, as no one can predict with certainty how life will be changed a decade from now due to AI’s vast potential.

The good news is that, in health care, AI is already having many significant positive impacts across numerous aspects of care delivery. 

Accelerating AI Adoption

Responding to a request for information from the Department of Health and Human Services on accelerating the adoption and use of artificial intelligence as part of clinical care, we told the department in part:

“Our member hospitals and health systems have seen AI tools’ potential to improve outcomes, increase access and reduce costs. From ambient listening technologies assisting with clinical documentation to chatbots helping with scheduling and triaging to algorithms supporting clinician interpretation of images, AI-based tools have already made a significant positive impact on hospitals and the patients they serve.”

However, it is important that the ongoing expansion and adoption of AI in health care be handled carefully, and that policymakers balance the need for flexibility to foster innovation with the right policy guardrails to ensure patient safety and improve patient experience.

To accelerate AI adoption, we have urged HHS to:

Synchronize and leverage existing policy frameworks to avoid redundancy.

While AI policies should be flexible to keep pace with innovation, they also should be synchronized and integrated with certain existing health care policy frameworks to minimize redundancies.

Remove regulatory barriers.

Certain statutes and regulations in the health care ecosystem, such as the patchwork of state privacy laws, have indirectly impacted hospitals and health systems’ ability to develop and deploy certain AI tools. We provided recommendations on ways to reduce regulatory barriers that inhibit the development and deployment of AI tools.

Ensure the safe and effective use of AI.

We recommended policies that ensure clinicians are included in the decision loop for algorithms that may impact access to care or care delivery, such as prior authorization, consistent privacy and security standards for third-party vendors, and post-deployment standards for health care AI developers to ensure ongoing integrity of tools.

Align incentives and address infrastructural factors.

Appropriate incentives and infrastructure investment are necessary to expand AI in health care. These are critical for both provider readiness and patient adoption. That being said, reimbursement for AI tools should not come at the expense of other medical services.

These sensible recommendations can help ensure that the integration of AI’s wondrous capabilities across the health care spectrum is seamless and productive, and that it enhances the care experience for both patients and providers. 

Leadership Dialogue AI Video

To give you a sense of how this is playing out in hospitals and health systems, we released a Leadership Dialogue video conversation with Marc Boom, M.D., president and CEO of Houston Methodist and the 2026 AHA board chair, and Amy Rockman, director of the Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence, a systemwide initiative of Rutgers Health and RWJ Barnabas Health. They explore AI applications that deliver measurable improvements in hospital safety, clinician burnout, and how a “living lab” approach, interdisciplinary teams and responsible AI integration benefit patients and the health care workforce.

Belief in the potential of AI to transform health care has been building in recent years. In 2019, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was quoted as saying, “AI is perhaps the most transformational technology of our time, and health care is perhaps AI’s most pressing application.”

Food for thought, and a reminder that we need to get it right.