{"id":331140,"date":"2025-12-05T02:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T02:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/331140\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T02:00:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T02:00:09","slug":"us-health-department-unveils-strategy-to-expand-its-adoption-of-ai-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/331140\/","title":{"rendered":"US health department unveils strategy to expand its adoption of AI technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services<\/a> on Thursday outlined a strategy<\/a> to expand its use of artificial intelligence<\/a>, building on the Trump administration\u2019s enthusiastic embrace<\/a> of the rapidly advancing technology while raising questions about how health information would be protected.<\/p>\n

HHS billed the plan as a \u201cfirst step\u201d focused largely on making its work more efficient and coordinating AI adoption across divisions. But the 20-page document also teased some grander plans to promote AI innovation, including in the analysis of patient health data and in drug development.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor too long, our Department has been bogged down by bureaucracy and busy-work,\u201d Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O\u2019Neill wrote in an introduction to the strategy. \u201cIt is time to tear down these barriers to progress and unite in our use of technology to Make America Healthy Again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new strategy signals how leaders across the Trump administration have embraced AI innovation, encouraging employees across the federal workforce to use chatbots and AI assistants for their daily tasks. As generative AI technology made significant leaps under President Joe Biden\u2019s administration, he issued an executive order to establish guardrails for their use. But when President Donald Trump came into office, he repealed that order<\/a> and his administration has sought to remove barriers to the use of AI across the federal government.<\/p>\n

Experts said the administration\u2019s willingness to modernize government operations presents both opportunities and risks. Some said that AI innovation within HHS demanded rigorous standards because it was dealing with sensitive data and questioned whether those would be met under the leadership of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Some in Kennedy\u2019s own \u201cMake America Health Again\u201d movement have also voiced concerns about tech companies having access to people\u2019s personal information.<\/p>\n

Strategy encourages AI use across the department<\/p>\n

HHS\u2019s new plan calls for embracing a \u201ctry-first\u201d culture to help staff become more productive and capable through the use of AI. Earlier this year, HHS made the popular AI model ChatGPT available to every employee in the department.<\/p>\n

The document identifies five key pillars for its AI strategy moving forward, including creating a governance structure that manages risk, designing a suite of AI resources for use across the department, empowering employees to use AI tools, funding programs to set standards for the use of AI in research and development and incorporating AI in public health and patient care.<\/p>\n

It says HHS divisions are already working on promoting the use of AI \u201cto deliver personalized, context-aware health guidance to patients by securely accessing and interpreting their medical records in real time.\u201d Some in Kennedy\u2019s Make America Healthy Again movement have expressed concerns about the use of AI tools to analyze health data and say they aren\u2019t comfortable with the U.S. health department working with big tech companies to access people\u2019s personal information.<\/p>\n

HHS previously faced criticism for pushing legal boundaries in its sharing of sensitive data when it handed over Medicaid recipients\u2019 personal health data<\/a> to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.<\/p>\n

Experts question how the department will ensure sensitive medical data is protected<\/p>\n

Oren Etzioni, an artificial intelligence expert who founded a nonprofit to fight political deepfakes, said HHS\u2019s enthusiasm for using AI in health care was worth celebrating but warned that speed shouldn\u2019t come at the expense of safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe HHS strategy lays out ambitious goals \u2014 centralized data infrastructure, rapid deployment of AI tools, and an AI-enabled workforce \u2014 but ambition brings risk when dealing with the most sensitive data Americans have: their health information,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Etzioni said the strategy\u2019s call for \u201cgold standard science,\u201d risk assessments and transparency in AI development appear to be positive signs. But he said he doubted whether HHS could meet those standards under the leadership of Kennedy, who he said has often flouted rigor and scientific principles.<\/p>\n

Darrell West, senior fellow in the Brooking Institution\u2019s Center for Technology Innovation, noted the document promises to strengthen risk management but doesn\u2019t include detailed information about how that will be done.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of unanswered questions about how sensitive medical information will be handled and the way data will be shared,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are clear safeguards in place for individual records, but not as many protections for aggregated information being analyzed by AI tools. I would like to understand how officials plan to balance the use of medical information to improve operations with privacy protections that safeguard people\u2019s personal information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, West, said, if done carefully, \u201cthis could become a transformative example of a modernized agency that performs at a much higher level than before.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strategy says HHS had 271 active or planned AI implementations in the 2024 financial year, a number it projects will increase by 70% in 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday outlined a strategy to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,167828,12,793,97,11382,53812,3319,16450,167829,788,74,792,800],"class_list":["post-331140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-darrell-west","tag-donald-trump","tag-general-news","tag-health","tag-information-technology","tag-jim-oneill","tag-joe-biden","tag-medical-technology","tag-oren-etzioni","tag-robert-f-kennedy-jr","tag-technology","tag-united-states-government","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}