Chairman Griffith's Opening Statement at Health Hearing on AI in Health Care

Today's hearing gives us the opportunity to continue the Energy and Commerce Committee's leadership on artificial intelligence or AI by examining current applications of AI across the healthcare sector. Last Congress, the subcommittee held a similar hearing on AI and machine learning. It is critical that we continue these types of educational hearings to understand the evolving health AI landscape and ensure that Congress keeps up with the many advances in this space, applications of AI and machine learning have increased across the healthcare sector in recent years and will only play a more pronounced role in the daily lives of all Americans moving forward. In the healthcare space today, AI is being deployed by innovators to empower patients along their personal healthcare journey. Support healthcare providers and reduce unnecessary administrative burdens. I look forward to learning more about these real world applications from our panel of experts today. I also believe this AI applications advance. It is critical that Congress continues to examine this landscape to ensure proper safety and proper oversight. These AI applications could be hugely beneficial to patients and providers, but they are to assist they are to assist and not to replace the clinical workforce today. I want to briefly highlight a few examples of how AI is being used to improve patient experiences and outcomes in the market today. Pharmaceutical companies are using AI to help improve core scientific research functions and develop life saving treatments and cures, as well as using AI to expedite clinical trials to bring safe and effective medicines to market quicker. Insurance companies are using AI to process claims in order to get care to patients quicker. But this is an area where oversight is needed to make sure that the AI is not being used in an inappropriate way. Uh, and we've seen that on occasion. So we've got to be careful. Physicians in hospitals who've been dealing with documentation burdens or using AI to assist in writing up and consolidating post visits records, which has helped reduce documentation time by roughly 1/3 in some cases and allowed for doctors to spend more time. That's right, you get to spend more time with their patients. What a novel idea. Companies who develop medical devices are using machine learning to better understand certain diseases and help advance innovations to deliver more clinically appropriate and effective care interventions. The Trump administration has also been forward leaning on advancing AI in the health space and streamlining a regulations to increase its application. I applaud the work of the current administration to incorporate AI in a responsible manner that can help improve care. To date, the CMS Innovation Center is working to utilize AI and machine learning to identify waste, fraud, and abuse in federal healthcare systems and to root out improper taxpayer spending. The FDA has incorporated the use of AI to drastically shorten the time needed to complete some tasks in their review process. Researchers at NIH have developed an AI algorithm that modernizes the process of matching potential clinical trial volunteers to suitable trials, cutting down administrative time by 40% while maintaining the same level of placement accuracy, and one would hope that would even get to be a better placement accuracy. These are only a few examples of the many ways the administration is integrating AI and streamlining the way our American healthcare system operates with all these innovative advancements being leveraged across the American healthcare ecosystem, it is paramount that we ensure proper oversight is being applied. because the application of AI and machine learning is only going to increase. We must ensure that these tools continue to empower and not replace the providers that serve our communities across the nation. These tools should help improve the patient experience and ultimately access to care, particularly in rural areas like the one that I represent in Virginia's 9th congressional district. I hope we have a constructive conversation today about the opportunities and the risks that come with AI and how our committee should be thinking about the role we can play in helping shape the future of AI and healthcare. I'm looking forward to hearing more from our witnesses and the members on this subcommittee on the application of AI