Health IT Firms Call for Clearer, More Consistent AI Rules

Health IT firms in the U.S. are calling for clearer, more consistent AI rules as conflicting state regulations create mounting challenges for companies operating across multiple jurisdictions. Industry leaders say the fragmented approach to AI regulation threatens to slow innovation while producing unequal care standards for patients depending on their location. 

President Donald Trump’s administration addressed these concerns with a December 11 executive order titled Ensuring A National Policy Framework For Artificial Intelligence. The directive seeks to establish unified nationwide standards rather than permitting individual states to continue developing their own methods for regulating the rapidly evolving technology. 

The order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to establish an AI Litigation Task Force to address state laws deemed to be at odds with national policy. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick must review existing state AI legislation and deliver findings within 90 days, identifying any that clash with federal policy objectives. 

States have pursued their own regulatory frameworks partly because Congress hasn’t enacted substantive federal oversight since AI first exploded onto the scene. The National Conference of State Legislators tracks over 1,000 AI-related bills across the country, with over 200 targeting healthcare applications specifically. 

Approximately 24 have been enacted into law so far. Republican State Senator Bo Watson from Tennessee defended state involvement by pointing out that states manage virtually all healthcare professional licensing. If AI gets deployed in diagnostics, who bears that responsibility, he asked. The White House contends that American AI developers require latitude to innovate without ‘burdensome’ oversight. 

The administration’s executive order argues that excessive state-level regulation creates 50 separate compliance frameworks that burden startups while interfering with interstate commerce. 

Healthcare technology vendors appear cautiously optimistic about federal standardization. Altera Digital Health VP of policy & public affairs Leigh Burchell explained that the fragmented state-level approach poses genuine challenges for healthcare organizations and IT developers in the health sector operating across state lines. A federal framework that’s risk-based and logical would establish a consistent framework to develop and adopt the technology responsibly across the industry, she said. 

Aaron Patzer, who leads Vital.io, framed the issue more urgently. Regulatory fragmentation represents a genuine threat rather than merely an inconvenience in healthcare, he said. Patients will encounter unequal standards of care if each state establishes its own AI rules, and innovations may not make it across borders due to the patchwork AI regulations. This makes a unified federal framework essential to protecting patients, speeding up innovation in the nascent AI health space and ensuring that the U.S. is at the forefront of artificial intelligence development, he argued. 

EVP of health system solutions at PointClickCare Bill Charnetski expressed his hope that there would be a consensus between the administration’s objectives and existing state level AI rules. Fold Health CEO and cofounder Abhi Gupta notes that the order works best when examined through a practical healthcare perspective and explained that more uniform rules can minimize deployment obstacles and aid AI health providers scale up their technology responsibly. 

A risk-proportionate approach that’s operationally practical with robust safeguards for high-impact clinical workflows and relaxed expectations for low-risk administrative automation would be most useful, Gupta says. 

Other tech firms like D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NYSE: QBTS) could also be equally concerned about the current fragmentation in AI rules from one jurisdiction to another. Having a uniform framework would go a long way in easing their operations. 

NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NYSE: QBTS) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/QBTS 

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