NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday outlined a strategy to expand the use of artificial intelligence, as the Trump administration enthusiastically embraces rapidly advancing technology, even as it raises questions about how health information will be protected.
HHS billed the plan as a “first step” primarily focused on streamlining operations and coordinating AI implementation across departments. But the 20-page document also hints at broader plans to accelerate AI innovation, including analysis of patient health data and drug development.
“For too long, our department has been mired in bureaucracy and busywork,” wrote Health Department Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill in the introduction to the strategy. “It’s time to come together in harnessing technology to remove these barriers to progress and make America healthy again.”
The new strategy shows how Trump administration leaders are embracing AI innovation, encouraging the entire federal workforce to use chatbots and AI assistants in daily tasks. Generative AI technology has advanced so much under President Joe Biden's administration that he issued an executive order putting guardrails in place for its use. But that order was repealed when President Donald Trump took office, and his administration is attempting to remove barriers to the use of AI across the federal government.
Experts said there are both opportunities and risks in the government's move to modernize government operations. AI innovation within HHS requires strict standards because it deals with sensitive data, and some have questioned whether those standards will be met under the guidance of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Some participants in President Kennedy's own Make America Healthy Again movement have expressed concerns about tech companies having access to people's personal information.
Strategies to accelerate the use of AI across departments
HHS' new plan calls for embracing a “try it first” culture to improve staff productivity and performance through the use of AI. Earlier this year, HHS made its popular AI model ChatGPT available to all employees in the department.
This document identifies five key pillars for a future AI strategy, including creating a governance structure to manage risk, designing a set of AI resources that can be used across departments, empowering employees to use AI tools, funding programs to set standards for the use of AI in research and development, and embedding AI in public health and patient care.
According to the report, HHS departments are already working to accelerate the use of AI to “securely access and interpret medical records in real time to provide patients with personalized, context-aware health guidance.” Some participants in President Kennedy's “Make America Healthy Again” movement have expressed concerns about the use of AI tools to analyze health data, saying they are uncomfortable with the U.S. Department of Health working with big tech companies to access people's personal information.
HHS previously faced criticism for pushing legal boundaries in sharing sensitive data when it turned over personal health data of Medicaid recipients to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
Experts question how the agency will ensure protection of sensitive medical data
Oren Etzioni, an artificial intelligence expert who founded a nonprofit group to fight political deepfakes, said HHS's enthusiasm for leveraging AI in health care is commendable, but he cautioned that it shouldn't pursue speed at the expense of safety.
“HHS' strategy has ambitious goals for centralizing data infrastructure, rapidly deploying AI tools, and an AI-enabled workforce, but ambition brings risks when dealing with the most sensitive data Americans have: health information,” he said.
Etzioni said the strategy's calls for a “gold standard of science,” risk assessment, and transparency in AI development seemed to be a positive sign. But he said he doubted HHS would be able to meet those standards under Kennedy's leadership, saying Kennedy has often ignored rigor and scientific principles.
Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brooking Institution's Center for Technology Innovation, said the document promises strengthened risk management but does not include detailed information on how that will be done.
“There are many unanswered questions about how sensitive medical information will be handled and how data will be shared,” he said. “While there are clear safeguards in place for individual records, there are fewer safeguards in place for aggregate information analyzed by AI tools. We want to know how authorities balance the use of health information to improve operations with privacy protections that protect people's personal information.”
Still, West said, if executed carefully, “this could be a transformative example of a modernized agency that performs at a much higher level than before.”
According to the strategy, HHS has 271 current or planned AI deployments in fiscal year 2024, and that number is projected to increase by 70% in 2025.
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