On Threads, Dr. Jen Gunter called our attention to the newly-introduced H.R. 238, “To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to clarify that artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies can qualify as a practitioner eligible to prescribe drugs if authorized by the State involved and approved, cleared, or authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, and for other purposes.”

Ultra-modern healthcare?

Presumably these non-person entities would not be your run-of-the-mill consumer generative AI packages, by rather specially trained Large Medical Models (LMMs).

Kinda like my “Dr. Jones, NPE.”

Even so, don’t count on this becoming law in the next two years. For one, Rep. David Schweikert introduced a similar bill in 2023 which never made it out of committee.

Why is Rep. Schweikert so interested in this and related topics? Because medical bills are too damn high:

““How do I make sure we’re embracing technology and using it to bring disruptive cures to market, or other opportunities to market?” Schweikert asked. “And does that also now help lower drug pricing?””

Before you reject this idea entirely, Rep. Schweikert cited one example of technology decision-making:

“Schweikert noted that the FDA last month approved Apple Watch’s atrial fibrillation feature for use in clinical trials — the first such digital health tool approved for inclusion in the agency’s Medical Device Development Tools program.”

But before anything like this will ever happen with prescriptions, the FDA will insist on extremely rigorous testing, including double-blind tests in which some prescriptions are written by currently-authorized medical professionals, while other prescriptions are written by LMMs.

And even when the ethical questions surrounding this are overcome, this won’t happen overnight.