Utah Allows AI To Renew Medical Prescriptions
- Reference: 0180530129
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/01/06/2227211/utah-allows-ai-to-renew-medical-prescriptions
- Source link:
> The state of Utah, through the Utah Department of Commerce's Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy, today announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with Doctronic, the AI-native health platform, to give patients with chronic conditions a faster, automated way to renew medications. This agreement marks the first state-approved program in the country that [3]allows an AI system to legally participate in medical decision-making for prescription renewals , an emerging model that could reshape access to care and ultimately improve care outcomes.
Politico provides additional context in its reporting:
> In data shared with Utah regulators, Doctronic compared its AI system with human clinicians across 500 urgent care cases. The results showed the AI's treatment plan matched the physicians' 99.2 percent of the time, according to the company. "The AI is actually better than doctors at doing this," said Dr. Adam Oskowitz, Doctronic co-founder and an associate professor of surgery at the University of California San Francisco. "When you go see a doctor, it's not going to do all the checks that the AI is doing."
>
> Oskowitz said the AI is designed to err on the side of safety, automatically escalating cases to a physician if there's any uncertainty. Human doctors will also review the first 250 prescriptions issued in each medication class to validate the AI's performance. Once that threshold is met, subsequent renewals in that class will be handled autonomously. The company has also secured a one-of-a-kind malpractice insurance policy covering an AI system, which means the system is insured and held to the same level of responsibility as a doctor would be.
>
> Doctronic also runs a nationwide telehealth practice that directs patients to doctors after an AI consultation. In Utah, patients who use the system will visit a webpage that verifies they are physically in the state. Then the system will pull the patient's prescription history and offer a list of medications eligible for renewal. The AI walks the patient through the same clinical questions a physician would ask to determine whether a refill is appropriate. If the system clears the renewal, the prescription is sent directly to a pharmacy. The program is limited to 190 commonly prescribed medications. Some medications -- including pain management and ADHD drugs as well as injectables -- are excluded for safety reasons.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~sinij
[2] https://commerce.utah.gov/2026/01/06/news-release-utah-and-doctronic-announce-groundbreaking-partnership-for-ai-prescription-medication-renewals/
[3] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/06/artificial-intelligence-prescribing-medications-utah-00709122
Re: How about booze? (Score:2)
Doctors in every state prescribe booze for certain things, like methanol poisoning.
They also prescribe cocaine for certain things like face cuts because unlike lidocaine or novacaine, cocaine not only numbs the area, but it is also provides strong vasoconstriction. Granted, the medical dosage for cocaine is much lower than the amount recreational users take.
yolo (Score:3)
hopefully they didn't train this AI on Reddit posts.
Wait. (Score:4, Insightful)
The plan is to use human doctors to validate 250 prescriptions, and then declare the AI good for autonomous doctoring? A pharmacist fills somewhere around 500 scripts a day (according to the internetz). So, the company is gonna pay a pharmacist for a half-day’s worth of work double-checking their AI, and then they think they can just hit “run” followed by “profit forever”? Sounds like their leadership is 100 percent techbro and zero percent medically-trained.
I think they need to add several zeros to that number.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you miss the critical word "renew"?
IMHO, this does nothing but good stuff for me. My refill is kind of a no-brainer (the medicine I take works great for me with no side effects and completely "cures" my problem). The problem is that if I miss seeing my specialist doctor and the prescription goes out of date, the specialty pharmacy cuts me off right away, causes me to miss doses until I can see the specialist again.
And like any good specialist, the wait time to see them can be months.
The only fly in the
Re: (Score:2)
It's just going to deny you for the same reason the pharmacy cuts you off plus an extra random denial every few years. This system isn't going to give you a new prescription once yours expires. It'll just add extra steps to when you'd normally call up and say you want the next bottle. Look at the last paragraph in the summary. The company's main product is a smart form. They puke a chat interface over a basic form and falsely call that an improvement. They're going to be doing the same thing to your r
Re: (Score:2)
The best way to do these renewals using an advanced autocomplete system rather than a regular, non-AI, logical algorithm is why exactly?
Re: (Score:2)
> The plan is to use human doctors to validate 250 prescriptions, and then declare the AI good for autonomous doctoring? A pharmacist fills somewhere around 500 scripts a day (according to the internetz). So, the company is gonna pay a pharmacist for a half-day’s worth of work double-checking their AI, and then they think they can just hit “run” followed by “profit forever”?
250 prescriptions in each medication class .
BigPharma approves of this AI application (Score:2)
I should invest in BigPharma stock.
Unintended consequences (Score:2)
This reminds me of the subsidies getting yanked from people who use the ACA. If you're not somebody who uses those subsidies congratulations your health insurance premiums are still going up because that's tens of billions of dollars of profit private insurance companies are going to need to make up from somewhere else and that's somewhere else is you.
It's not uncommon for doctors to use prescription renewals as an opportunity to Bill your insurance company in order to keep their practices open.
So l
Haha (Score:3)
"I have a cold, please give me your strongest opioid" "Opioids aren't recommended for a cold" "Yes they are" "You're quite right. Here's your prescription, good day"
Re: (Score:2)
I think you missed the last line of the summary.
> Some medications -- including pain management and ADHD drugs as well as injectables -- are excluded for safety reasons.