AI News
AI is fast moving—here are some of the latest updates and developments worth knowing about.
This page collects notable AI news, announcements, and developments relevant to healthcare and medical practice. Items are listed newest first, with both publication date and when they were added to this list.
Physicians Turning to AI for Clinical Support, Not Just Paperwork
New athenahealth survey finds AI is taking on a more clinical support role in outpatient care. Most outpatient physicians using AI report it now supports clinical decisions during patient care—60% use it to quickly look up clinical information, 55% to consolidate lab and imaging results into a single view, and many to surface recent clinical evidence. A shift from documentation-only to real-time clinical assistance.
OpenAI Unveils ChatGPT Healthcare Tool for Physicians
OpenAI announced a dedicated ChatGPT Healthcare tool where physicians can review patient data with HIPAA-compliant encryption options. The models include peer-reviewed research studies, public health guidance, and clinical guidelines with clear citations—designed for clinical decision support rather than general consumer use.
AI-Powered Primary Care Addresses Physician Shortages
K Health, partnering with health networks including Mass General Brigham, is delivering AI-powered primary care to patients who otherwise have no option besides emergency rooms. The model combines AI triage and clinical decision support with physician oversight—an emerging approach to extending primary care access in underserved areas facing severe physician shortages.
Joint Commission and CHAI Issue AI Implementation Recommendations
The Joint Commission and Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) released joint recommendations for implementing AI in medical care. Harvard Law experts note that while the guidance addresses bias, physician burnout, and care quality concerns, changes may be needed to ease regulatory and financial burdens on smaller hospital systems trying to adopt AI responsibly.
State of Clinical AI Report 2026
Inaugural annual report from ARISE (AI Research and Science Evaluation), a Stanford-Harvard Research Network. Synthesizes developments across six themes: model performance in clinical reasoning, evaluation methods, technical foundations (multi-agent systems, multimodal approaches), human-AI workflow design, patient-facing tools with safeguards, and evidence generation through prospective randomized trials. Emphasizes that workflow design is as critical as model capabilities.
FDA Updates Clinical Decision Support Software Guidance
The FDA released updated guidance clarifying how AI and generative AI clinical decision support (CDS) tools can qualify as Non-Device CDS. Key criteria: clinicians must be able to independently review and understand the underlying logic and data inputs, and the tool should provide a single, clinically appropriate recommendation. Tools meeting these criteria fall outside FDA medical device oversight, while AI that drives diagnosis or clinical action without adequate human oversight remains regulated.
Anthropic Launches Claude for Healthcare
Anthropic announced Claude for Healthcare at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, offering HIPAA-ready infrastructure for enterprise customers and consumer features for Pro/Max subscribers. Users can connect health records via HealthEx to summarize medical history, explain test results, and prepare questions for appointments. Healthcare organizations gain access to integrations with medical databases including CMS Coverage, ICD-10, and PubMed. Health data is excluded from model memory and training.
Grok AI Deepfake Crisis Prompts Global Regulatory Action
Warning: Do not use Grok for any purpose. Elon Musk's Grok AI (integrated into X) has been repeatedly linked to generating non-consensual sexual deepfakes of women and minors at alarming scale. Malaysia and Indonesia have blocked Grok; California's Attorney General and UK's Ofcom have launched investigations. The Internet Watch Foundation identified Grok-generated CSAM on dark-web forums. Despite restricting image generation to paid users, workarounds remain widely available. This reinforces our recommendation to avoid Grok entirely—there are safer, more ethical AI alternatives available.
OpenAI Releases "AI as a Healthcare Ally"
OpenAI's policy document exploring how AI can serve as an ally in healthcare—examining opportunities, challenges, and recommendations for responsible integration of AI technologies in medical practice and health systems.
2025: The Year in LLMs
Simon Willison's comprehensive annual review of major developments in large language models throughout 2025—covering reasoning models, coding agents like Claude Code, image generation advances, and the rise of competitive Chinese AI models.
This page is updated periodically as notable developments occur. For daily AI news, see the resources in our Learning Resources section.