{"id":604503,"date":"2026-04-24T23:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T23:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/604503\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T23:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T23:02:10","slug":"utah-medical-board-calls-for-suspension-of-ai-doctor-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/604503\/","title":{"rendered":"Utah medical board calls for &#8216;suspension&#8217; of AI doctor experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"author-bio\">Mario Aguilar covers technology in health care, including artificial intelligence, virtual reality, wearable devices, telehealth, and digital therapeutics. His stories explore how tech is changing the practice of health care and the business and policy challenges to realizing tech\u2019s promise. He\u2019s also the co-author of the free, twice weekly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/signup\/health-tech\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">STAT Health Tech newsletter<\/a>. You can reach Mario on Signal at mariojoze.13.<\/p>\n<p>Utah\u2019s high-profile experiment with using an artificial intelligence system to renew prescriptions without physician oversight is facing its first major challenge as doctors in the state push back.<\/p>\n<p>Utah\u2019s Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy in January announced an agreement with AI doctor startup Doctronic to launch a chatbot that can conduct a clinical evaluation of a patient and autonomously renew prescriptions for nearly 200 drugs. In a letter published Friday, the Utah Medical Licensing Board said it only learned about the agreement after it had been launched and asked the state to halt the program.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cProceeding with this agreement without consulting the Medical Board potentially places Utah citizens at risk and remains a major concern of the board,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fsmb.org\/siteassets\/communications\/doctronic-letter-from-medical-board.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">they wrote<\/a>. \u201cIt is the strong recommendation of the Utah Medical Licensing Board that this program be immediately suspended pending further discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"restricted-text\">STAT+ Exclusive Story<\/p>\n<p class=\"restricted-login\">Already have an account? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/login\/\" data-stat-login=\"\" data-stat-paywall-cta=\"breaker login cta\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Log in<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"restricted-content-breaker-bg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765280600_844_stat-plus-breaker-bg.png\" alt=\"STAT+\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/stat-plus\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"stat-plus-logo\" src=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/stat\/images\/stat-plus-logo-white.svg\" alt=\"STAT+\"\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\tThis article is exclusive to STAT+ subscribers<br \/>\n\t\t\t\tUnlock this article \u2014 and get additional analysis of the technologies disrupting health care \u2014 by subscribing to STAT+.<\/p>\n<p class=\"restricted-content-breaker-wrapper-cta mobile\">Already have an account? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/login\/\" data-stat-login=\"\" data-stat-paywall-cta=\"breaker login cta mobile\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Log in<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tIndividual plans<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tGroup plans<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/stat-plus\/\" class=\"stat-button view-all\" data-stat-paywall-cta=\"breaker view all plans\" aria-label=\"View All Plans\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">View All Plans<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"restricted-content-text\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\tTo read the rest of this story subscribe to STAT+.\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/stat-plus\/\" class=\"stat-button restricted-button\" data-stat-paywall-cta=\"breaker subscribe cta 1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mario Aguilar covers technology in health care, including artificial intelligence, virtual reality, wearable devices, telehealth, and digital therapeutics.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[181,97,252,37583,253,1343],"class_list":{"0":"post-604503","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-health-care","11":"tag-health-tech","12":"tag-healthcare","13":"tag-policy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604503","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=604503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}