Call gets louder to license medical GenAI like any human healthcare professional
A growing chorus of academic physicians, policy experts and public health specialists is harmonizing behind the idea of licensing medical GenAI models like they’re doctors or nurses.
In November, UPenn hospitalist Eric Bressman, MD, MSHP, along with colleagues from Harvard, Brown and the University of Potsdam, published an opinion piece in JAMA Internal Medicine advancing the notion.
“Amid uncertainty around the AI regulatory environment—as the current administration has signaled a lighter touch—there may be an opportunity to craft a more agile, forward-thinking approach for clinical AI,” the researchers wrote. “A licensure framework may help ensure that innovation scales with accountability and not ahead of it.”
Now comes a blog post by Julia Hinkley, JD, director of policy strategy at UPenn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI), building on the momentum.
“Ideally, a new federal digital licensing board would oversee the framework,” Hinckley writes in the informal brief, published by the LDI Jan. 29. “But existing federal and state bodies could play important roles: “The FDA could retain its role in premarket assessments, preventing developers from needing to submit to 50 state licensing authorities.”
Hinkley also supports the previously floated idea of letting health systems with AI expertise function as “implementation centers.”
Meanwhile state medical boards would supply continuing oversight, collaborating with or deferring to a federal coordinating body to harmonize standards.
Clearly regulatory innovation is in order, Hinckley emphasizes.
And it’s not like there’s no precedent for such.
“[C]oncerns about generative AI, such as hallucinations and performance drift, mirror worries from the late 19th century about quack remedies and variable clinician training,” she writes. “Licensure’s approach, combining practice standards with ongoing surveillance and education, can be adapted for AI regulation.”
Both the peer-reviewed paper and the succinct blogpost present a reader-friendly table showing parallels between clinician licensing and a potential future AI licensing structure.
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.
