Digital AMA Position on the 2025 Federal Government AI Action Plan
Aug 7, 2025 | 6 Min Read
The American Medical Association (AMA) supports the administration’s release of America’s AI Action Plan. Health care AI offers a real chance to improve patient care, enhance health outcomes, and ease physician workload. However, the AMA underscores that lack of trust among the public and professionals remains a major barrier to adopting AI in clinical settings.
Your Powerful Ally
The AMA stands as a committed partner focused on addressing issues that matter to health care providers, allowing them to concentrate on patients. This challenge requires collaboration, and the AMA is ready to meet it head-on.
Key Considerations for AI in Health Care
As the federal government advances the AI Action Plan, the AMA highlights essential principles to guide AI development and use in medicine:
- Physician Partnership: Physicians must be involved at every stage—from AI design and development to governance, rulemaking, standards, post-market monitoring, and clinical integration. Their expertise is crucial to validate AI tools, ensure alignment with standard care, and protect the patient-physician relationship.
- Transparent Policy Making: Federal AI policies should be developed openly, engaging not only developers and industry but also physicians and patients who are the end users.
- National Standards: The AMA supports accelerating adoption of national standards that guarantee safety and performance of AI systems, with active physician representation.
- Liability Clarity: Addressing liability concerns is vital. The AMA advocates for clear apportionment of liability that limits physician responsibility for AI-related errors.
Coordinated, Transparent Government Approach
The AMA agrees that a unified regulatory framework is necessary. Developers, users, and especially physicians and patients need clarity and consistency. The FDA’s ongoing adaptation to regulate AI-enabled medical devices highlights the need for modernized authority to ensure these tools remain safe and effective.
Health care AI carries significant risks due to its direct impact on patient health. Federal agencies must work together to avoid fragmented or overlapping regulations that could hinder innovation and confuse clinicians. AI tools affecting medical decisions or patient access should undergo rigorous testing and oversight before public use. The AMA warns against a “try-first” approach in real-world care settings, reserving it for controlled testing environments only.
Coordination between federal and state policymakers is key. Federal rules can set national standards and risk frameworks, while states can handle implementation and address local concerns.
Data Security and Bias Mitigation
Trust in AI depends heavily on data management. This includes how data is collected, used for training AI models, and how bias is identified and minimized. Privacy remains a top priority. The AMA calls for strong governance to protect patient data and transparency about data use.
High-quality, representative data reduces AI bias, but access and exchange must respect individual preferences and comply with laws. The AMA supports “secure-by-design” AI and stronger cybersecurity to protect both medical practices and patient information.
Addressing Bias in AI
Bias poses a serious risk in health care AI and can lead to harm. The AMA agrees with the plan’s focus on eliminating ideological bias and pursuing objective truth. Excluding topics like misinformation and diversity, equity, and inclusion from risk management could weaken efforts to tackle bias and discrimination. Strong measures to reduce bias are essential to build trust and improve care quality.
Upskilling the Physician Workforce
The AMA emphasizes the importance of education on AI for physicians at all career stages. AI is becoming an important tool in medical training and practice. Investments in education will help physicians evaluate AI tools properly and increase confidence in their use.
Medical educators are enthusiastic about AI’s potential to enhance training and personalize learning across medical school, residency, and practice.
Commitment to Safe and Ethical AI Integration
The AMA remains dedicated to guiding ethical, safe, and effective AI adoption in health care. Patient and physician safety must remain the highest priority. Speed to market should never come at the expense of safety.
Key elements to build trust include:
- Assuring safety and performance of AI tools
- Mitigating bias
- Protecting data privacy
- Establishing clear liability frameworks
These steps are critical to increase confidence and support wider adoption of AI in health care.
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