Photo: Walter Bibikow/Getty Images
The Trump Administration, this past Friday, put forth its new National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence, a set of goals and recommendations for legislators that the White House says should streamline innovation while protecting families and communities and expanding workforce development, among other priorities.
Along with other AI imperatives, the legislative framework seeks to further establish efforts to unify a national artificial intelligence policy that prevents potentially conflicting state regulations.
By calling for federal preemption in areas that impact national interest, the plan aims to provide regulatory clarity, White House officials say.
WHY IT MATTERS
Early reaction from legal and IT policy experts suggests the proposed framework's risk-based approach, in healthcare and elsewhere, could lead toward national standards for clinical and administrative AI – and could help reduce compliance burdens on developers and providers.
The proposal, which is not primarily focused on healthcare, prioritizes six White House objectives:
- Protecting children and empowering parents
- Safeguarding and strengthening American communities
- Respecting intellectual property rights and supporting creators
- Preventing censorship and protecting free speech
- Enabling innovation and ensuring American AI dominance
- Educating Americans and developing an AI-ready workforce
"The Administration is calling on Congress to take steps to remove outdated or unnecessary barriers to innovation, accelerate the deployment of AI across industry sectors and facilitate broad access to the testing environments needed to build and deploy world-class AI systems," said Trump Administration officials in announcing the legislative framework.
The White House put together the new recommendations to help eliminate what it says would otherwise be "a patchwork of conflicting state laws" that "would undermine American innovation and our ability to lead in the global AI race."
Contained in the four-page framework are about 25 actions Congress is called upon to take, across several sectors, to help ensure AI services and platforms protect children as they empower parental controls, build out data infrastructure in ways that assure economic growth and energy dominance, support and protect AI creators while fostering an AI-ready workforce and preempt "cumbersome state AI Laws."
A patchwork of state AI regulations is seen by some as a barrier to AI innovation – not least in healthcare, where an array of proposed and enacted regulations are focused on the development of AI tools for care delivery, health and wellness.
Initial response to these goals from healthcare IT developers has been largely positive.
"We strongly support the establishment of a national legislative/regulatory framework that would give the states a level of comfort and (hopefully) lead to a reduction in the number of state-specific laws," said Leigh Burchell, VP of policy and public affairs for Altera Digital Health and chair of the HIMSS EHR Association, which represents electronic health record and other health IT vendors.
"However, it's important that any such national approach address the factors specific to AI use in healthcare, ideally through a risk-based approach that differentiates administrative AI use vs. clinical," said Burchell in an email to Healthcare IT News.
"The national AI policy framework released by the White House is an important and promising step toward urgently needed regulatory clarity," said Tina Joros, chair of the EHRA Artificial Intelligence Workgroup, and vice president of policy and innovation at health IT vendor Veradigm.
The framework could potentially reduce the number of AI-specific laws being proposed, others noted.
"The National Policy Framework for AI should give states a meaningful degree of comfort," said Katy Milner, a partner in law firm Hogan Lovell's Global Regulatory practice.
"While it clearly prioritizes federal, nationwide AI laws, it also draws boundaries around federal preemption," Milner told Healthcare IT News. "State policymakers should feel reassured in their continued power to regulate AI in traditional areas of jurisdiction, such as police powers and zoning."
Milner noted that it could also address the administration's concerns about AI regulatory overreach at the state level.
The Trump Administration's goal is that the federal government "should preempt state laws that stand to harm American competitiveness," she said. "This prospect may chill state-level interest in enacting AI laws."
While the EHR Association has supported a federal approach to AI governance to reduce regulatory complexities and provider burdens, it also advocates for a national healthcare AI policy that protects patient safety and fosters confidence in AI tools to support clinical and administrative workflows.
EHRA urges Congress to "include healthcare-specific AI governance requirements that differentiate between low- and high-risk use cases in any federal framework that is put forward," Joros told Healthcare IT News on Monday.
Milner, meanwhile, said that, while the framework does not speak directly about healthcare AI, there is room to take a risk-based approach in healthcare – in a way that differentiates between administrative and clinical AI.
"Generally, the framework recognizes that not all AI is the same," she said. "The framework also directs Congress to support development of sector-specific AI applications through existing agencies with subject matter expertise."
"This means that the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Health and Human Services] will have leeway to draw on their expertise and craft sector-specific AI policies." -Katy Milner, Hogan Lovell
As an example, the framework's first key objective, protecting children and empowering parents, translates well to healthcare, Milner said.
"It suggests that a risk-based approach is appropriate, and that functions such as administrative use should not be subject to as strict regulation as clinical AI applications," she explained.
THE LARGER TREND
In the absence of any meaningful regulatory AI guardrails from Congress, many U.S. states have so far used their own legislative mechanisms to manage challenges posed by fast-evolving AI models and have sought to take the lead on safety guardrails.
This past year, for instance, California was the first state to pass a law that aimed to promote AI innovation while protecting public safety by ensuring AI models are safe and secure, trustworthy and transparent.
The Golden State's Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act requires frontier AI model developers to publicly disclose how they incorporate national and international standards and industry-consensus best practices into their AI model development frameworks and to report potential critical safety incidents to California's Office of Emergency Services.
It also protects whistleblowers who disclose significant health and safety risks posed by such models.
Several other states have been working on hundreds of potential bills that seek to address many challenges posed by AI. Governors in Utah, Colorado, Texas and New York have also signed laws regulating AI used in healthcare.
Massachusetts lawmakers are currently studying SB 2632, a proposal that would limit AI from making independent therapeutic decisions in mental or behavioral health settings. The Bay State's Joint Committee on Health Care Financing is due to make its report on the proposal at the end of the month.
In November, the White House paused an executive order (EO) that would have created a mechanism under the attorney general to sue states that establish AI laws, such as those requiring AI technologies to meet bias mitigation requirements.
Then, in December 2025, the administration released the EO, "Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence," directing a litigation task force, calling for the evaluation of state AI laws and more.
The majority of health IT companies support more consistent AI rules and a unified national approach. However, state and local governments have responsibilities when it comes to regulating aspects of health AI, according to Republican State Senator Bo Watson of Tennessee.
"States do almost all the licensure for healthcare professionals," Watson said during the 2025 HIMSS AI Leadership Strategy Summit in Chicago. "If AI is being used in the diagnostic space, who owns that?"
ON THE RECORD
"The federal government is uniquely positioned to set a consistent national policy that enables us to win the AI race and deliver its benefits to the American people, while effectively addressing the policy challenges that accompany this transformative technology," the White House said this past Friday.
"The administration looks forward to working with Congress in the coming months to turn this framework into legislation that the president can sign."
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
