Dive Brief:
- The Department of Health and Human Services last week released its plan to deploy and centralize artificial intelligence use within the agency, as part of a broader push by the Trump administration to cut costs and adopt the technology in the federal government.
- The agency said it will prioritize sharing AI resources among HHS departments, create a governance structure for new tools and promote use of the technology for public health initiatives.
- Although the strategy is internally focused to start, HHS said it will collaborate with the private sector and identify “priority” conditions and health issues that could be addressed with AI tools.
Dive Insight:
The plan from HHS comes after an executive order from President Donald Trump and a series of memos from the Office of Management and Budget earlier this year that directed federal agencies to accelerate their adoption of AI.
Separate departments within HHS have said they would use AI tools, including the Food and Drug Administration, which said earlier this week it would begin using agentic AI to support premarket reviews. In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it would start using AI to analyze public health data.
HHS said its new strategy would centralize AI tools and resources across departments, in a plan dubbed “OneHHS.” The agency said it would also train employees to use AI “at all levels.”
“For too long, our Department has been bogged down by bureaucracy and busy-work; even the most productive public servants are mired in paperwork and process. … It’s time to tear down those barriers,” said Jim O’Neill, deputy secretary of HHS, in the news release.
HHS’ new internal strategy includes preliminary assessments of the agency’s AI tools, which HHS said will help it gauge the “maturity” of its internal AI.
In addition to creating a database of AI tools, HHS will create a governance board of senior leaders from HHS divisions. The board will meet at least twice per year, streamline approvals for new AI projects, conduct monitoring of tools and establish various risk protocols for “high-impact AI” applications. HHS did not respond to a request for comment on the members of the board.
The agency said it would also fund science programs that use AI in biomedical research and development, and support the adoption of AI tools for “clinical decision support,” a wide array of tools that doctors and clinicians can use to augment patient care.
HHS said its metric examples, or successful goals of adopting the AI tools for public health, would be a reduction in hospital readmissions, lower sepsis mortality, less unnecessary emergency department revisits, and improved infant and maternal health outcomes.
The agency’s strategy comes as the healthcare sector has increasingly adopted AI tools, hopeful they can solve pernicious challenges like staffing issues and lengthy administrative tasks.
But AI comes with risks, and problems like inaccurate responses and biased data can have serious consequences for patients and providers.
So far, the industry has approached these risks with little guidance from the federal government. Then-President Joe Biden signed a sweeping executive order on deploying AI in healthcare in January, but it was rescinded days into the second Trump administration. Although Trump has unveiled plans meant to spur AI adoption, they’ve contained few healthcare specifics.
At the same time, the Trump administration has encouraged federal agencies to adopt AI in an effort to cut costs. At HHS, the push to adopt the technology comes in the midst of an agency-wide restructuring. In April, HHS said it would lay off 10,000 workers and reduce its divisions from 28 to 15.
