The Trump administration wants to bring personal health care into the "digital age" by encouraging Americans to sign up to share medical records with US firms, but this initiative might serve a greater purpose.
The Trump Administration Wants to "Digitize" The Healthcare System, Involving Big Tech Corporations
One of the top priorities of President Trump's AI action plan was to integrate the technology across government and private sectors, with deregulation as a central objective, and it seems like the first industry to see a massive change might be the health sector. Reported by AP, it is revealed that the Trump administration is announcing a new program that will give Americans the opportunity to submit personal health records to Big Tech, allowing them to come up with better and a "digital form" of a healthcare system.
For decades America’s health care networks have been overdue for a high tech upgrade. The existing systems are often slow, costly and incompatible with one another, but with today’s announcement, we take a major step to bring health care into the digital age.
- President Trump
According to what we have seen, Americans would have the choice to opt into the program, and it is claimed that their data would remain completely secure. Importantly, one of the bigger changes with this program would be intended to make data retrieval, particularly medical records, easier for professionals to learn about a patient's history without any difficulties. Apart from this, it is claimed that the digitized health system would allow users to track health issues such as diabetes and weight management, through AI-driven applications.
However, the program has seen skepticism from several professionals, particularly on how the data is going to be used by organizations. Since there's no legal guardrail on what AI systems could infer from medical data, patients won't have control over how their data is used. While there are laws such as the HIPAA Act, they certainly don't deal with health information being used as datasets for AI models, which shows concerns about this initiative.
There are enormous ethical and legal concerns. Patients across America should be very worried that their medical records are going to be used in ways that harm them and their families.
- Lawrence Gostin, Georgetown Law Professor
For now, the specifics about the program aren't confirmed for now, but we do know that more than 60 companies such as the likes of Google and Amazon, will be a part of this digital health ecosystem.
About the author: Muhammad Zuhair is a hardware and technology reporter for Wccftech, specializing in the semiconductor industry and the complex interplay between technology, manufacturing, and geopolitics. His coverage focuses on the corporate strategies and technological roadmaps of industry giants like TSMC, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Intel. Zuhair's expertise lies in deconstructing complex topics such as fabrication nodes (e.g., 2nm process), the economic impact of policies like the CHIPS Act, and the strategic development of AI infrastructure from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
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