Columbus, OH – In a new policy brief, Advancing Healthcare Technology, The Buckeye Institute urges lawmakers to create a “regulatory sandbox” so that AI innovators can develop new medical technologies in a flexible, safe regulatory environment that lowers costs and cuts red tape.

“An AI healthcare sandbox will build trust between regulators, developers, care providers, and the patients they serve, and move Ohio to the fore of the healthcare technology field,” said Rea S. Hederman Jr., executive director of the Economic Research Center and vice president of policy at The Buckeye Institute. “This win-win scenario fosters faster, cost-effective innovation for improving patient health safely and, as AI yields efficiencies in diagnostics, data management, and research, doctors and nurses will have more time to interact directly with patients.”

An AI healthcare sandbox “will allow healthcare providers, AI developers, and policymakers to collaborate and responsibly test novel technologies related to drug development, medical imaging, disease diagnosis, gene therapy, medical research, and health data management with lower costs and less red tape.” 

The brief outlines that a well-designed AI healthcare regulatory sandbox should be:

• Instructive, providing clear guidelines and support for navigating the regulatory landscape over the long term;
• Voluntary, offering participants choices and the freedom to accept or decline participation;
• Secure, protecting patient information even as it allows new AI technologies to analyze confidential data for medical insights.
• Impartial, maintaining trust and fairness by guarding against regulator partiality or bias; and 
• Coordinated, harmonizing standards and healthcare practices with other states to promote wider adoption and innovation in AI-driven solutions.

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