Bonnie Odom, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practices, in the firm’s Los Angeles office, was quoted in Bloomberg Daily Labor Report, in “Health Care’s AI Embrace Boosts Workforce Despite Privacy Risks,” by Cici Yongshi Yu and George Weykamp. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
Health providers using artificial intelligence tools to automate clinical visit notes can reduce their administrative burdens and staffing shortages, but they do so at the risk of violating health privacy laws.
The lack of regulatory oversight for generative AI and patient data authorization raise particular concerns, attorneys say, as a growing number of healthcare facilities incorporate AI into their practices.
“In the last couple years we’re seeing more and more clients interested in leveraging AI,” said Bonnie Odom, a member specializing in healthcare and telehealth regulation at Epstein, Becker & Green. “It’s definitely not going away anytime soon.” …
While the agency has the power to regulate the use of large language models, that authority will depend on whether they are intended to treat or diagnose a condition or disease.
Technology is always “several steps ahead,” of regulators, Odom said, and companies are piecing together what they expect compliance programs to look like while they await official regulations.
In the meantime, Odom suggested, healthcare providers should hire a compliance officer, create an avenue to report concerns and audit the technology, and provide training for employees using the software.
“It’s been a little bit of piecing together what is generally expected in a compliance program, and then applying that to the specific risks that integrating AI entails,” she said.
