The Trump administration has indefinitely canceled meetings of a health technology advisory committee responsible for helping to formulate rules around the use of data and artificial intelligence tools in health care, according to a memo obtained by STAT.
The brief memo, circulated early Wednesday, informs members of the Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC) that all meetings of the committee and its working groups are canceled until further notice. The committee operates under the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy and the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ASTP-ONC).
The cancellation comes at a crucial time for rulemaking in the use of health technology, as businesses across the industry are moving rapidly to adopt artificial intelligence products to automate record keeping and make decisions about patient care. While many organizations hope AI can ease administrative burdens and cut costs, the HITAC committee, and the rules it has helped to formulate, are designed to create protections for patients at a time of rapid innovation.
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