“We're a long way from robots running off with patient care,” said Richard Frank, MD, PharmD, a member of the AMA-convened Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) Editorial Panel.
Dr. Frank, the former chief medical officer of Siemens Healthineers, made that remark at the conclusion of the AMA’s CPT & RBRVS 2025 Annual Symposium, held virtually last year.
The event serves as the setting for speakers to explain the changes being made in the coming year to the CPT code set, often referred to as the “language of medicine,” and to describe how the codes have been updated to adapt to new technology, innovation and developments in the practice of medicine.
Naturally, augmented intelligence (AI)—often called artificial intelligence—was the subject of much discussion during the event.
There are more than 11,000 CPT codes in use. In 2025, there were numerous updates to the code set to describe AI-enabled medical services. Updates to the CPT code set are determined by the CPT Editorial Panel, an independent, physician-led body supported by input from hundreds of stakeholders that include medical specialty societies and industry experts to ensure clinical validity and align with real-world practices.
Dr. Frank was noting that, although the use of AI in medical decision-making is expected to boom, “these autonomous devices are still going to be under the judgment of the prudent physician making those decisions for their individual patient.”
Dr. Frank should know. He co-chaired the AI working group of the AMA-convened Digital Medicine Payment Advisory Group, which generated the content for the CPT code set’s Appendix S, which is where the CPT AI Taxonomy is housed.
The taxonomy was introduced in 2022 and has been implemented in CPT codes to classify AI medical services and procedures as assistive, augmentative or autonomous. That classification is based on the work performed by the AI application on behalf of the physician or other qualified health care professional.
The codes added for 2025 are for AI augmentative data analysis involved in:
- Electrocardiogram measurements, 0902T.
- Echocardiogram measurement, 0932T.
- Medical chest imagining, 0877T–0880T.
- Image-guided prostate biopsy 0898T.
They are all Category III CPT codes, which means they are temporary and used for emerging technologies, services and procedures. In all, 30% of the additions to the CPT 2025 code set described new innovations in medicine.
“Augmentative” refers to an AI level that analyzes or quantifies data in a clinically meaningful way, but still requires interpretation by a physician or other qualified health care professional.
Reflecting the increasing integration of AI into clinical care, the recently released CPT 2026 code set includes several new codes for AI services. These codes support patient access to innovative technologies that assist physicians by detecting clinically relevant data that might otherwise go unnoticed, or augment physician work by analyzing and quantifying data to produce clinically meaningful insights.
New considerations for CPT code set
Many more services driven by AI and other digital health tools are anticipated, and the CPT Editorial Panel is already receiving a steady increase in CPT code applications for medical services that rely entirely on algorithmic analysis, without traditional physician work at the point of care. In response, the AMA established the AMA Digital Medicine Coding Committee led by Dr. Frank, an internist, and his co-chair Mark Synovec, MD, who is a pathologist and former chair of the CPT Editorial Panel.
“It clearly became evident, with the advent of more and more codes related to AI, that we really needed to bring that expertise closer to the Panel’s work and so, hence, the formation of the Digital Medicine Coding Committee,” said Dr. Synovec, president of the independent Topeka Pathology Group, during the symposium.
In general, the committee is providing advisory input to the CPT Editorial Panel, and seeking to “create a consistency and predictability in the code set” regarding AI and digital medicine, Dr. Synovec explained.
Specifically, the committee is focused on:
- Framing goals of AI and digital medicine codification and payment in terms of harmonization, synchronization, and alignment with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
- Performing critical review of digital health code-change applications.
- Working on an expansive project seeking to ensure that the AI definitions in Appendix S remain contemporary through the end of this decade.
- Considering coding solutions for autonomous AI and population-health services.
- Proposing, for discussion, a new coding framework within the CPT code set, tentatively titled Clinically Meaningful Algorithmic Analyses (CMAA). The suggested CMAA codes seek to describe services in which algorithms process clinically relevant data, such as images or lab results, to produce medically actionable outputs even when no physician is directly involved at the point of service.
The Digital Medicine Coding Committee includes representatives from several physician specialties as well as a seat formally reserved for an FDA representative, plus informal representation from CMS.
“They have been sitting in and listening and providing input where necessary,” Dr. Synovec said of CMS.
How CPT codes reflect AI’s impact
In a separate presentation, Dr. Frank told how AI-driven services are described in the CPT code set “by the impact that the technology has on the work of the physician or qualified health professional, both in the amount of work and in the changes in the way the service is performed.”
He quoted from the Appendix S introduction which explains why the term “AI” remains undefined in both the taxonomy and the code set.
“In health care, there is no single product, procedure or service for which the term ‘AI’ is sufficient—or even necessary—to describe its intended clinical use or utility,” Dr. Frank said.
The taxonomy is intended to describe the work done by algorithms or software, he explained.
“The use of the term ‘AI’ in the CPT context is not intended to encompass nor constrain the full scope of innovations characterized as the work done by machines, and it is not intended to convey that the physician is being replaced,” he added. “In fact, it is quite the opposite—the core function of a CPT code is to describe the physician work necessary to perform a medical service.”
During an audience Q&A session, Dr. Frank noted that physicians and others who use digital medicine and AI tools in their everyday practice are being asked to identify coding gaps and solutions for the CPT Editorial Panel to consider.
From AI implementation to electronic health record (EHR) adoption and usability, the AMA is fighting to make technology work for physicians, ensuring that it is an asset to doctors—not a burden.
CPT coding enables precision
The CPT code set continues to serve as a trusted infrastructure that supports transparency, facilitates appropriate clinical use and helps ensure that validated, high-performing algorithms are adopted into care pathways.
This is because CPT codes are created by an established process of physician-led deliberation and used
by regulators, payers, and physicians and other health care providers. Category I CPT codes describe services that have broad clinical adoption and are backed by strong clinical evidence. They are typically covered by public and commercial payers and support the integration of services into routine clinical care. Category III CPT codes are designed to track emerging technologies and procedures, allowing for data collection on clinical utility of these innovations.
CPT codes continue to evolve
AI capabilities are only accelerating, and the AMA is taking deliberate action to make sure the CPT code set continues to be a dynamic and responsive language, capable of accurately describing, distinguishing and supporting emerging innovations in AI-driven health care.
To stay current with the CPT code set, register to attend a CPT Editorial Panel meeting and view actions that the CPT Editorial Panel has taken on code applications on the AMA website.
