Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services published a sweeping document that described the agency’s approach to real-world data. Historically, health and biomedical data has been intentionally manufactured, the output of carefully designed clinical trials. But in a digitized world, it can instead be mined — and patients’ interactions with the health care system are the natural resource.

The Living HHS Open Data Plan, published in July, proposed treating data more like we do other natural resources. “At the core” of the plan, it reads, “lies the concept that data is a ‘public utility’ for good that powers scientific advancement, innovation, and progress.” Patients should have access to that utility, HHS argued, but it should also be easier to leverage for research, safety monitoring, and other uses in the public interest. 

On Thursday, a group of researchers, former agency officials, and health data companies continued that call in a policy forum published in Science. If health data is to be treated like a public utility, they write, it should be similarly governed. Like electricity, the system would have to involve customers, local distribution companies, transmission companies, generators, and the government. 

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OpenEvidence has rapidly become a household name among physicians, with a chatbot that answers their day-to-day clinical questions. Last year, it raised $200 million — twice — valuing the company at more than $6 billion. Its next reported round, yet to be confirmed, would double its valuation to $12 billion. 

It doesn’t come as much of a surprise, then, that the four-year-old startup took its first step onto the stage this year at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, where many of the health care industry’s most prominent players lay out their grand visions for investors. 

Investors’ exuberance for OpenEvidence is emblematic of the AI froth that has taken over health care, and JPM, in the last two years — applying the technology, and in particular its generative variety, to everything from drug discovery to back office operations to patient care. AI-based startups Abridge and Hippocratic AI, along with OpenEvidence, have all closed multiple mega-rounds this year, noted Rock Health in its 2025 digital health funding report. 

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LAS VEGAS — The Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that it will ease regulation of digital health products, following through on the Trump administration’s promises to deregulate artificial intelligence and promote its widespread use.

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary indicated that one of the agency’s priorities is fostering an environment that’s good for investors, and that FDA regulation needs to move “at Silicon Valley speed.” He announced the changes during an address to conference attendees at the Consumer Electronics Show.

The agency will soften its approach to the regulation of clinical decision support software, which include AI-enabled products that help doctors navigate diagnoses and treatment options. The agency previously considered products that delivered a single recommendation as FDA-regulated medical devices. Now, those products can enter the market without FDA review as long as they fulfill the agency’s other criteria for escaping regulation. 

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The health care industry is gearing up for a battle over whether and how clinical artificial intelligence should get paid for. 

As of the end of September, the Food and Drug Administration has authorized 1,357 AI-enabled medical devices. But very few of those tools are actively paid for by insurers. 

Some health policy experts and clinicians don’t see that as a problem.

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In many parts of the United States, patients have gotten used to living without primary care. Nearly 75 million people in the United States live in an area with a shortage of these critical providers, leading to long wait times — if a patient can find primary care at all. 

The scale of the access problem, “it’s like red alert — red, red, red alert level — and it’s been like that for a while,” said physician Rajesh Patel, vice president of digital patient experience at Mass General Brigham.

The situation is only getting worse: By 2037, the nation will be short 87,000 primary care physicians, according to federal estimates. 

Clinical artificial intelligence company K Health thinks it has part of the solution. Over the last two years, it has partnered with five large health systems — Cedars-Sinai, Mayo Clinic, Hackensack Meridian Health, Hartford HealthCare, and Mass General Brigham — to launch round-the-clock virtual primary care platforms enabled by its AI. Today, it announced another partnership with Northwell Health, New York’s largest health system, which began rolling out its platform in October. 

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Health insurance companies are fighting fire with fire as they combat rising medical costs they say are being driven up, in part, by artificial intelligence. 

Large private insurers have continued to call out purportedly overzealous coding and billing as a source of ballooning health care costs. In particular, some have blamed the use of AI tools for some of the surge in claims from health care providers that have cut into their profits. 

“I’ve talked to a couple of my peers where it does seem like the hospitals have gotten better organized around the application of AI for coding than payers,” said Centene chief financial officer Andrew Asher at the Deutsche Bank Healthcare Summit last month. “But we’re going to catch up to that.”

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