Rise of AI Pharmacist
AI discovers drugs … AI writes prescriptions … AI does the paperwork.
What if going to a doctor’s office and seeing a ‘human’ doctor becomes a thing of the past?
This AI-driven future of health care is coming faster than expected with the newly (re)introduced H.R. 238. Healthy Technology Act of 2025 — which aims to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to allow AI and machine learning systems to “qualify as practitioners” and to “prescribe drugs” (under certain conditions).
The primary driver for this initiative is Arizona’s own Republican U.S. Rep. David Schweikert. He originally introduced it as the H.R. 206 two years ago, but it didn’t get traction.
AI and machine learning have advanced quite a bit since then, and Schweikert is still pushing to turn this vision into policy.
H.R 238 is mainly trying to expand the definition of “who can issue drug prescriptions” by clarifying that a “practitioner licensed by law to administer such drug” may include an AI or machine-learning system. In practical terms, this means an FDA-recognized AI could legally write prescriptions just like a physician or other human provider.
The bill also states that two key provisions need to be met for an “AI practitioner” to operate.
State Authorization — The AI system must be authorized by the state where it’s being used to prescribe medication
FDA Approval/Clearance — The AI must be approved, cleared, or authorized by the FDA as a medical device under relevant pathways (sections 510(k), 513, 515, or 564 of the FDCA)
This isn’t the only AI-related health care bill Schweikert has introduced. He’s behind H.R. 193 Maintaining Innovation and Safe Technologies Act, which asks the Secretary of Health and Human Services to come up with a “payment guideline” on how much Medicare will pay for remote monitoring devices like a continuous glucose monitor.
“My fascination with AI integration has been ever-present,” Schweikert said after the same policy passed committee last year. “This legislation embraces the morality that is tied to implementing innovation further in our health care system.”
But not everyone is fully sold on this vision.
Schweikert’s bill to bring AI into the prescribing process has zero co-sponsors.
U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC), a physician and member of the GOP Doctors Caucus, insists that “they (AI) should not be able to unilaterally decide a patient’s healthcare.” U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY), a member of the House AI Task Force, supports innovation but warns that AI in health care must address systemic disparities before moving forward.
The medical community isn’t rushing to embrace AI-powered prescribing, either.
American Medical Association President Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld warns that AI in health care feels like “building the plane as you’re flying it,” with lawsuits already surfacing over AI-driven errors. Nursing organizations echo the concern — the American Nurses Association has made it clear that AI should never come at the expense of “caring and compassion.”
While AI may assist doctors, replacing them is a far tougher sell.
One of the fundamental regulatory questions that the bill raises but doesn’t answer is who bears responsibility if an AI prescriber harms a patient? Currently, the law doesn’t recognize machines as liable “practitioners.” If an AI writes a faulty prescription, is it the physician overseeing the AI, the hospital, the software vendor, or the FDA that approved it at fault?
Until laws clearly address malpractice and product liability for AI, even pro-technology lawmakers might be hesitant to move forward.
While legislatures struggle to answer and agree on important questions and concerns, the AI health care arms race is in full swing, with U.S. tech giants — Oracle, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple — making aggressive moves to reshape medicine.
Oracle founder Larry Ellison said the massive AI infrastructure project dubbed Stargate is helping to fuel the development of a cancer vaccine.
"One of the most exciting things we're working on – again using the tools that Sam (Altman, founder of OpenAI) and Masayoshi (Son, CEO of SoftBank) are providing – is our cancer vaccine," Ellison said during a news conference with President Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.
Google’s DeepMind has led to breakthroughs in protein structure prediction (AlphaFold) and medical AI applications, integrating its work into Google Health while expanding cloud-based AI partnerships with major providers like Mayo Clinic.
Microsoft has solidified its role as health care’s AI infrastructure provider, particularly through its $20 billion acquisition of Nuance, the leader in AI-powered medical dictation. Its AI-assisted documentation tool, DAX Express, promises to cut physician paperwork, while its Azure OpenAI integrations bring GPT-4 to electronic health records (EHRs) via a major partnership with Epic.
Apple, in contrast, is using AI to transform consumer health, embedding machine learning into the Apple Watch for FDA-cleared atrial fibrillation detection and expanding AI-driven health monitoring through its Health app. With regulatory approval for select features and partnerships with medical institutions, Apple’s play is a cautious but strategic push into AI-powered preventive care.
An Arizona company that is competing in this AI Healthcare innovation space is C-Path Institute, located in Tucson. C-Path is a nonprofit organization that collaborates with various stakeholders to accelerate drug development. They leverage AI to enhance the management and treatment of diseases like Type 1 Diabetes and Parkinson's. Their initiatives focus on using AI to streamline drug development processes and improve patient outcomes.
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