Bill introduced to allow AI to prescribe medications

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Specializes in Psychiatric and Mental Health NP (PMHNP).

Personally, I find this very disturbing:

"Artificial intelligence (AI) could be used to prescribe medications to patients -- if a new bill makes its way through Congress.

The proposed legislationopens in a new tab or window, sponsored by Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), would amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to clarify that AI and machine learning technologies can qualify as a practitioner eligible to prescribe drugs if authorized by the state involved and approved by the FDA."

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/114158

"The Congressman's optimism aside, AI has already fumbled in healthcare repeatedly — like the time an OpenAI-powered medical record tool was caught fabricating patients' medical histories, or when a Microsoft diagnostic tool confidently asserted that the average hospital was haunted by numerous ghosts, or when an eating disorder helpline's AI Chatbot went off the rails and started encouraging users to engage in disordered eating . . . 

When it comes to AI outpatient care, you don't need to be Cory Doctorow to imagine a world of stratified healthcare — well, anymore than we already have — where the wealthiest among us have access to real, human doctors, and the rest of us are left with the unpredictable AI equivalent."

https://futurism.com/neoscope/new-law-ai-replace-doctor-prescribe-drugs

MDs are upset about NPs driving down their wages, NPs are concerns about too many new NPs driving down their pay, and now we can look forward to the tech bros, health insurance companies, and healthcare organiztions trying to replace many providers with AI.  

 

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Specializes in Research & Critical Care.

That's nuts. Using AI to suggest proper treatment, OK makes sense. But giving AI full prescriptive authority is absolutely crazy at this stage.

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Specializes in Psychiatric and Mental Health NP (PMHNP).
MaxAttack said:

That's nuts. Using AI to suggest proper treatment, OK makes sense. But giving AI full prescriptive authority is absolutely crazy at this stage.

I agree.  Hopefully this bill will be squashed.  AI is in no way ready for this type of work.  They still haven't been able to produce a truly safe self-driving car!  Yet this idiot in Congress thinks AI is ready to prescribe medications?  

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Specializes in Gerontology, Education.

"... if authorized by the state involved and approved by the FDA." But employees have  already been fired at the FDA and the Director of FDA food safety has resigned as a result. Who will be left to approve AI as a practitioner?

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Specializes in Patient Safety Advocate; HAI Prevention.

And I thought THIS was bad....https://jasemedical.com/case 

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Specializes in Psychiatric and Mental Health NP (PMHNP).
KathyDay said:

And I thought THIS was bad....https://jasemedical.com/case 

I saw them advertising on TV and was wondering about that.  Thanks for the link - I want to check it out.  The legality seems questionable.

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