{"id":666919,"date":"2026-05-26T23:09:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T23:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/666919\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T23:09:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T23:09:26","slug":"stat-health-tech-early-data-from-doctronics-ai-experiment-in-utah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/666919\/","title":{"rendered":"STAT Health Tech: Early data from Doctronic’s AI experiment in Utah"},"content":{"rendered":"

You\u2019re reading the web edition of STAT\u2019s Health Tech newsletter, our guide to how technology is transforming the life sciences.\u00a0Sign up to get it<\/a>\u00a0delivered in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday.<\/p>\n

Good morning health tech readers!<\/p>\n

Last evening, after a dreary, rainy Memorial Day weekend in New York, the sun finally poked its head out. Just in time for us to get back to work. <\/p>\n

Reach me:\u00a0[email\u00a0protected]<\/a><\/p>\n

What have\u00a0we learned\u00a0from Doctronic\u2019s\u00a0AI experiment in Utah?<\/p>\n

After five months, the state of Utah released some data<\/a> about its experiment with AI startup Doctronic. The state earlier this year authorized the company to use an AI chatbot to renew prescriptions for roughly 200 medications. The pilot operates under a program that allows the state\u2019s Office of AI Policy to waive regulations for AI companies that agree to oversight and safeguards. The hope is that the state will learn more about what kinds of rules make sense for AI in health care. The Utah Medical Licensing Board recently came out forcefully against the pilot<\/a>. At the time of the launch,\u00a0experts told me the plan is risky<\/a>, and that it\u2019s not clear an AI bot can legally renew prescriptions without Food and Drug Administration authorization.<\/p>\n

Currently, the pilot is in its first phase, where all of the AI\u2019s decisions are being reviewed by clinicians.\u00a0We don\u2019t know is how many sessions Doctronic has done in Utah, but the state says the number is \u201climited.\u201d So what exactly have we learned?<\/p>\n

The AI renews prescriptions 72% of the time without escalating to physician for reasons like missing lab work. In 69% of cases, reviewers determined\u00a0escalations were appropriate.<\/p>\n

The AI doesn\u2019t always agree with humans. In cases where AI granted the renewal, physicians agreed 91% of the time. In cases where there was a disagreement, second clinicians disagreed with the first reviewer most of the time. In 3% of cases, neither clinician agreed with the AI.<\/p>\n

Bias. A main drawback of the data is that all of this supervision and review is being done by Doctronic\u2019s team. But\u00a0state officials are expected to\u00a0do an independent review. Zach Boyd, director of Utah\u2019s AI office, told me the state has obtained an anonymized sample of conversations that experts will review \u201cto both confirm Doctronic\u2019s reports and give qualitative feedback for how to improve the pilot where that may be necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doctronic Co-CEO Adam Oskowitz said the early data underscores the safety of the system and its guardrails: \u201cNo adverse events or contraindicated prescriptions were identified in the early results of Phase 1,\u201d he wrote to me. \u201cPhase 1\u2019s pre-approval gate functioned as intended with no inappropriate prescriptions identified because nothing got through that shouldn\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the numbers are interesting \u201cWe should be careful about what they prove,\u201d said Girish Nadkarni, chief AI officer at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should not let early operational numbers get translated into \u2018AI prescribing is safe.\u2019\u00a0The fair conclusion is narrower: a constrained AI system may be able to help process selected refill requests, but we still need independent evidence that it is safe, equitable, and better than a well-designed physician-supervised workflow.\u201d<\/p>\n

BigHat Biosciences CEO on what creates an edge in AI drug design<\/p>\n

BigHat Biosciences works with some of the biggest drugmakers: It has partnerships with Merck, Amgen, Abbvie, Lilly, and recently completed work with Johnson & Johnson. The company also has two candidates of its own\u00a0headed to the clinic.<\/p>\n

Brittany Trang caught up <\/a>with CEO Peyton Greenside in San Mateo last week to talk about the actual hard parts of AI drug design. \u201cIf you want me to design you a protein right now in six hours, I\u2019m happy to do it,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more here<\/a><\/p>\n

AI developers aren\u2019t taking advantage of FDA policy that allows speedy updates<\/p>\n

A common complaint from AI developers is that that the technology moves so quickly that the plodding pace of FDA review can\u2019t keep up. Developers must lock their software for studies\u00a0and submissions, so by the time a product is on the market, it might be several years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n

New research<\/a> suggests developer aren\u2019t taking advantage of a\u00a0policy that allows developers to get pre-approval from FDA for changes. Researchers analyzed public documents from 794 AI-enabled medical devices authorized from 2023 to 2025, covering roughly the time period since FDA finalized guidance on predetermined change\u00a0control plans for AI devices. Just 42 devices had plans on file.<\/p>\n

The researchers noted a modest increases starting in 2025, which may reflect a lag in taking advantage of the policy. Still, \u201clow overall adoption indicates that there remain unidentified barriers to PCCP use or that certain AI-enabled devices may simply be unamenable to prespecified design changes that preserve safety and effectiveness,\u201d the authors wrote.<\/p>\n

Oura inches toward public filing<\/p>\n

Smart ring maker Oura last week announced<\/a> it had confidentially filed a draft registration to go public. Speedy work, considering the company just announced it had raised $900 million last October.<\/p>\n

Exits & Outcomes<\/a> analyzed filings in other countries that suggest the company\u2019s revenues were $924 million for its fiscal year that ended in September 2025, more than double the $396 million it earned the year before.<\/p>\n

E&O author,\u00a0Brian Dolan\u00a0writes: \u201cOne of the thresholds for filing for an IPO as an \u2018Emerging Growth Company\u2019 is total annual gross revenues under $1.235 billion. While I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s incentive enough for Oura to hurry up and IPO in 2026, it seems likely the company would not qualify for that status if it filed next year. This way, Oura would only need to disclose its past two years of financial performance among other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dolan cautions that \u201caccounting practices are different country-by-country, so these numbers may look a bit different\u201d in the filing to go public in the United States.<\/p>\n

What we\u2019re reading<\/p>\n

How Kyle Diamantas defied expectations as he rose to lead the FDA, STAT<\/a><\/p>\n

AI agents plunged the tech world into chaos. Here\u2019s exactly how that happened, Wired<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You\u2019re reading the web edition of STAT\u2019s Health Tech newsletter, our guide to how technology is transforming the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,37583,83663,253,248],"class_list":["post-666919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-health-tech","tag-health-tech-newsletter","tag-healthcare","tag-stat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666919","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=666919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}