As AI has the potential to improve access to care, a patchwork of state laws and policies threatens to derail progress

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the Connected Health Initiative (CHI) released its Health AI Principles for State Policymakers, a practical framework for state legislatures, executive agencies and healthcare leaders to implement responsible artificial intelligence (AI) policy. 

With the United States facing severe workforce shortages in healthcare, including an estimated shortage of 141,000 physicians, 355,000 nurses and 423,000 behavioral health professionals by 2038, responsibly developing and leveraging AI and digital health tools will be critical to improving individual patient outcomes, reducing costs, augmenting population health management, and supporting the healthcare workforce. Realizing these benefits will require a careful balancing of oversight with measures that will foster ingenuity. 

“State governments have a distinct role to play in facilitating responsible health tech policy, but a state-by-state regulatory patchwork risks slowing the modernizations that are so desperately needed to provide Americans across the country with the care they need,” said Brian Scarpelli, Executive Director of the Connected Health Initiative. “Our principles offer state lawmakers a clear, risk-based roadmap that will ensure that state AI policies directly support clinicians and patients.”

The position paper outlines core principles for evaluating state health AI policy. These include: 

  • A Coordinated Approach to AI in Healthcare: Leverage existing state laws and regulations before creating new obligations, harmonize state requirements with federal anchors (such as the FDA, ONC, and NIST AI Risk Management Framework), and utilize state purchasing power and grant funding (such as the $50 billion CMS Rural Health Transformation Program) to drive responsible AI adoption.
  • Quality Assurance and Oversight: Apply risk-based oversight calibrated to intended clinical use and severity of risk, while ensuring a fair distribution of liability across the AI value chain.
  • Thoughtful Design and Oversight: Encourage human-centered design that is integrated into workflows and oversight.
  • Access and Affordability: Modernize Medicaid coverage, state employee health plans, and payment models to appropriately cover and reimburse for efficacious AI-enabled services, including in the context of value-based care arrangements.
  • Transparency and Research: Align state disclosure expectations with established consensus frameworks while supporting collaborative research.
  • Bias Mitigation: Support efforts to reduce data biases through real-world testing and continuous performance monitoring for drift.
  • Workforce and Education: Build AI literacy across professions through updated curricula, continuing education, training clinicians, and targeted workforce development grants.
  • Intellectual Property: Protect legal IP protections and trade secrets, including training data, to maintain incentives for ongoing health technology innovation.

“AI tools are vital in supporting the healthcare workforce and reducing administrative burnout,” added Scarpelli. “We urge state legislatures and executive agencies to look to these principles as they consider state policy, and CHI looks forward to engaging across the states to achieve our shared healthcare goals.”

Read the full position paper online here: https://connectedhi.com/health-ai-principles-for-state-policymakers/.

###

About Connected Health Initiative

The Connected Health Initiative (CHI) is the leading policy advocate on digital health issues. With a base of more than a thousand stakeholders and led by a steering committee including every part of the healthcare sector, CHI accomplishes essential policy changes that responsibly support the development and use of digital health innovations to improve individual patient experiences and outcomes, reduce costs, enhance population health management, and augment the clinician experience.