Artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating faster than Usain Bolt after the pistol shot, and it shows no signs of slowing down.
In the past month, President Trump has issued an executive order to reduce government oversight of AI development in the US and announced the Stargate project, a $500 billion investment in AI paid for by big tech companies Softbank, OpenAI, and Oracle.
Plus, Chinese company DeepSeek introduced its ChatGPT competitor called R1, sending US companies scrambling to keep up.
Given the heightened focus on the technology, Healthcare Brew asked health tech execs what industry leaders should be focused on when it comes to AI in 2025.
A regulation dichotomy
One area execs are watching is AI regulation and how it will evolve under the new administration, as there’s no standard framework for regulating the technology like there is for medicine or medical devices.
The Biden administration was focused on privacy protections when it came to AI in healthcare, Neel Shah, chief medical officer at women’s health virtual care platform Maven Clinic, told Healthcare Brew. And in the European Union (EU), last year regulators passed the EU AI Act, which prohibits certain AI data collection practices, like gathering facial recognition data compiled by surveillance cameras, to protect patient privacy.
But so far, the Trump administration seems to be taking a more hands-off approach. The executive order Trump signed on Jan. 23 reverses protections the previous administration had put in place, such as requiring companies developing large language models that could threaten national security to submit information on their safety testing protocols, Stat reported.
However the new administration approaches AI regulation, health systems and companies aren’t sitting around and waiting to develop guidelines, according to Dugan Winkie, head of commercial strategy at health fintech company Cedar. Winkie said organizations are taking it upon themselves to evaluate AI tools and determine their safety and efficacy, and that many healthcare systems already have some sort of AI safety and governance oversight committee in place.
Navigate the healthcare industry
Healthcare Brew covers pharmaceutical developments, health startups, the latest tech, and how it impacts hospitals and providers to keep administrators and providers informed.
“They’re not allowing any vendors to make their way past their gates until they’re passing their threshold on ethical standards, risk management, interdisciplinary collaboration, and also results,” Winkie said.
The University of California, San Francisco’s health AI oversight committee, for example, “evaluates all AI and machine learning tools for trustworthiness prior to use in the health system,” according to the system’s website.
Looking ahead, healthcare leaders must navigate the “dichotomy” of national-level AI policy and “autonomous” self-regulation, Winkie added.
Building trust
Beyond regulation, healthcare companies in 2025 will be focused on building trust with patients in regards to incorporating AI into their care decisions, the execs agreed.
“There’s going to need to be a lot more trust because of how sensitive health topics are and the data that’s associated with them,” Sam Holliday, CEO of GI-focused health tech company Oshi Health, told Healthcare Brew. “I think there’s a higher bar in healthcare and a lot more trust that’s needed before people do things at scale.”
Shah said Maven’s trust-building strategy involves reserving AI for things technology can do better than a human, like large-scale calculations and data storage, rather than things humans could do better, like communicating with and expressing empathy for patients.
“For every application of AI—or technology in general—it’s really important to be very thoughtful about where the human is in the loop,” Shah said. “The actual question for us is, ‘How do you get the human and AI to partner in order to do things that actually neither can do by themselves?’”