It was announced this week by Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP) Ranking Member Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana). white paper About artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential impact on healthcare, education, and the workforce. How do top HELP Republicans predict the future role and impact of AI in the world of healthcare?
The first application mentioned in the white paper is one of the most obvious. It’s about improving drug development and approval. AI is already impacting drug development, with more than 100 drug approval applications submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2021, using AI to develop certain drugs. AI has the potential to reduce development costs for manufacturers by up to a point. $54 billion annually. To take advantage of these benefits, FDA must not only collaborate with academia and industry on AI research, but also be able to hire experts from a wide range of disciplines to help understand how to wisely regulate AI. Additionally, AI can speed up the drug review process. Senator Cassidy notes that Congress needs to consider how to help the FDA recruit and retain top talent and how to incorporate AI into the approval process.
The paper also discusses the potential role of AI in medical devices and its diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities. The FDA approved more than 200 AI-enabled medical devices from 2021 to 2022. As AI technology evolves and becomes more widespread, Congress will need to update its agency authorization framework to keep pace. Notably, FDA’s current review process is not designed to incorporate products whose software changes and improves over time. Targeted flexibility is needed to ensure that innovation is not unnecessarily stifled while keeping consumers safe.
AI is already being used to help doctors diagnose patients, but questions remain about what this means for the clinician’s role in patient care. Because stakeholder trust is key to the widespread adoption of AI, this paper seeks to increase transparency in AI development so that patients and clinicians understand how to most appropriately and effectively use these tools. I’m looking for it. This is especially true for the patient population on which the AI algorithm was trained. Training populations different from actual patients can lead to inaccurate usage. The paper also calls for a framework that makes liability for harm to patients from the use of AI predictable and clear.
AI will also have a significant impact on medical administration and insurance coverage. Given that administrative tasks, especially those related to electronic health records, are the number one cause of physician burnout, AI’s ability to reduce time spent on these tasks could help prevent workforce shortages and improve the quality of patient care. It will be of great help in improving. AI has the potential to streamline administrative burdens on health systems, such as scheduling and filing claims, as well as claims processing by health insurance companies. The paper points out that some estimates suggest that the use of AI in administrative functions could save 5% to 10% of national health care costs. However, the paper also notes that Congress needs to ensure that AI algorithms do not override clinical decisions. Given the current debate over the appropriate use of AI algorithms, there is certainly a delicate balance required. prior approval.
Finally, Senator Cassidy’s paper notes that Congress needs to address privacy concerns for data used in AI. Some of that data is already covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rules, but not all of it. AI can anonymize data used in algorithms, but it can also be used to re-identify that data as belonging to a specific individual. The white paper asks Congress to consider ways to protect health information outside the scope of HIPAA. Patient trust in AI systems is critical to benefiting from these tools.
AI will continue to play an increasingly important role in healthcare R&D, clinical, and administrative aspects. Senator Cassidy’s white paper raises important questions that policymakers should ask experts and voters, as well as important issues that any framework must address. Congress needs to develop targeted and flexible policy solutions in the coming years to ensure that AI is a boon, not a bane, for healthcare.
