On April 29, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) unveiled its Plan for how it will promote responsible use of AI products in healthcare. The plan aims to better position state, tribal, local, and/or territorial government entities (STLTs) to effectively adapt AI in the next two to three years. The AI Plan is in response to a Biden Administration’s Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence published in October 2023.
The AI Plan provides insight into HHS’s plan to advance responsible innovation and manage the risks associated with different types of AI technologies. It applies to public benefits delivery and provides commentary on existing guidance on AI.
The guidance has two main objectives:
- “Provide recommendations to STLTs and their technology vendors for how they should choose, procure, design, govern, and manage AI in the administration of public benefits and services.
- Outline HHS’s plans over the next 12 months to offer STLTs support in developing their own policies and practices for using AI in automated and algorithmic systems for public benefits programs and services.”
The Plan focuses heavily on assessing AI’s risk and its impact on rights and safety. Using this foundation, the guidance moves on to outline policy recommendations for using AI including strategies to advance responsible AI innovation and preserving ways to opt out of AI.
The guidance also explores topics that HHS is considering issuing guidance on in the future. These include parameters around automation, appeal rights, customer support vs. automated customer support, and Generative AI used to support public facing use cases and backend administrative use cases. This list is non-exhaustive, and more areas of potential guidance will inevitably arise as AI continues to grow out of its infancy.
ADVOCATE will share additional information with clients and friends as it becomes available on this and other Federal Health Policies.
Kirk Reinitz, President
