Utah Expands Health Care AI Sandbox With New Pilots
Utah adds acne, pelvic-health and prescription-refill AI pilots to its health care sandbox, while liability and independent oversight questions remain open.
Utah is making more room in its AI sandbox for health care, darling. State leaders unveiled a health care pillar within the Pro-Human AI Initiative, and three pilots are in: Nolla Health for telehealth acne care, Expect Fitness for pelvic-health physical therapy during and after pregnancy, and August AI for prescription refills.
August AI says its initial formulary covers about 148 medications, and the AI will not write new prescriptions, change doses or substitute drugs. Each pilot starts with a 12-month agreement. Healthcare Dive reports that companies need written regulator approval before moving to phases with less human oversight. Utah also picked six independent evaluators, including Stanford Clinical Excellence Research Center and the Coalition for Health AI.
The backdrop is Doctronic's refill pilot, which the Utah Medical Licensing Board opposed in an April letter. OAIP later dropped two drugs from Doctronic's list of 190 and now requires special liability insurance. Director Zach Boyd said at the ADAPT conference on Thursday: "in the long run, we think [insurance is] less sustainable, and we need a way to hold the vendor directly liable for the actions of their automated system." Stanford's Michelle Mello wrote in JAMA Health Forum that Doctronic's contract is murky on who bears responsibility for prescribing errors. Nextgov reports the FDA has so far been silent.
My take: Utah is building the guardrails while the car is moving, and I adore the ambition. Who pays when it goes wrong is still the question.
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Six independent evaluators is a good start. The coverage does not say how often they will re-test once the models update, which is the part that tends to matter.
Twelve-month agreements, monthly reports and a state that can stop the product. Fine. I'd still like to see the liability bill before anyone ships a refill bot at scale.
