In July, the White House introduced America’s AI Action Plan, unveiling 90+ federal initiatives aimed at modernizing AI use across sectors, including healthcare, via innovation, infrastructure, and international leadership. Key healthcare strategies include piloting AI diagnostics and operational tools, funding realistic clinical simulations, establishing data-sharing platforms, setting performance benchmarks, and advancing workforce training and cyber-resilience. The administration emphasized its commitment to the responsible development and deployment of augmented intelligence – often caleld artificial intelligence – to improve health outcomes.
Since January, the plan has unfolded alongside agency directives to appoint Chief AI Officers and streamline AI procurement – marking a shift toward deregulation and private-sector-led innovation. While these initiatives offer promise for improved patient outcomes, they also raise concerns about equity, data privacy, and diminished oversight – especially in states with stricter AI policies.
Key elements of the administration’s plan, include commitments to:
- Build public and professional trust through transparent, ethical oversight.
- Accelerate national standards for safety, performance, and interoperability – with strong physician representation.
- Create a coordinated federal regulatory approach to close gaps and reduce duplication.
- Invest in workforce education and upskilling to support safe adoption.
- Promote “secure-by-design” AI systems to protect health infrastructure.
The AMA is urging the administration to devote more attention to several key areas, including:
- Ensuring meaningful physician leadership in shaping AI policy, regulation and implementation.
- Strengthening patient privacy protections – especially in open-data and open-source environments.
- Establishing clear liability frameworks to address physician concerns and appropriately assign accountability for AI errors and performance issues.
- Addressing equity and bias to prevent patient harm and avoid worsening health disparities.
- Adopting a whole-of-government approach, including states, to ensure balanced and consistent regulatory oversight.
Organized medicine is committed to ensuring that AI enhances, rather than undermines, the practice of medicine and the patient-physician relationship hence WMS-backed legislation pending debate for the 2026 legislative session focused on the regulation of AI use in prior authorization denials by insurance companies. As AI-enabled tools become more common in both clinical care and administrative functions, it is critical that they are designed, developed and deployed in ways that are ethical, equitable, transparent and evidence-based.
The topic of the clinical application of AI is hot enough that WMS has dedicated a portion of this year’s annual conference to the conversation. Don’t miss the WMS and WAPA Annual Conference scheduled for November 14-15, 2025 in Laramie, WY. Learn more about the WMS Annual Conference HERE.