AMA CEO and Executive Vice President John Whyte, MD, MPH, is detailing his vision for a U.S. health system in which physicians take a central role in guiding and implementing the digital health and augmented intelligence (AI) tools that are quickly changing how medicine is delivered.
AI “isn't the future of the practice of medicine. This is happening now,” Dr. Whyte said during an event this month at MATTER, a health care technology incubator in Chicago that has worked with the AMA for a decade to bring entrepreneurs and physicians together to accelerate the development of new technologies, services and products.
The way that AI tools already are exerting their influence in medicine is one reason why, as one of his first initiatives since becoming the AMA’s CEO this summer, Dr. Whyte launched the AMA Center for Digital Health and AI. During an hour-plus fireside chat with MATTER CEO Steven Collens, he detailed the center’s focus areas and outlined some of the key questions that will drive the AMA’s efforts to put doctors at the center of health innovation.
From AI implementation to digital health adoption and EHR usability, the AMA is fighting to make technology work for physicians, ensuring that it is an asset to doctors. The AMA Center for Digital Health and AI will address four key areas that are pivotal to the long-term success of these technologies:
- Policy and regulatory leadership—working with regulators, policymakers and technology leaders to shape benchmarks for safe and effective use of AI in medicine and digital health tools.
- Clinical workflow integration—creating opportunities for physicians to shape AI and digital tools so they work within clinical workflows and enhance patient and clinician experience.
- Education and training—equipping physicians and health systems with knowledge and tools to integrate AI efficiently and effectively into practice.
- Collaboration—building partnerships across the tech, research, government and health care sectors to drive innovation aligned with patient needs.
Too many digital health tools have failed because developers failed to talk with physicians and the clinical community about what works and what doesn’t, said Dr. Whyte. Such technologies were “really imposed upon physicians and they really did not need that. What’s so important is to change the paradigm.”
“All too often, physicians aren’t leading that,” and are regarded “as an afterthought, or a tech company takes one or two physicians and that’s good enough to explain how we do it.”
Developers might have a new algorithm to treat infectious disease, “but if it's not part of the clinical workflow—which is what physicians understand—then it's not going to succeed,” said Dr. Whyte, a board-certified internal medicine physician with nearly 30 years of experience.
This is where physicians need to change the discussion. “We have to invest in technology. We have to create benchmarks for technology, and we have to be leading the discussion,” said Dr. Whyte.
Otherwise, he noted, the focus of what technology can achieve can focus on the wrong endpoints.
“I've talked to AI technology vendors, and do you know what they talk about? They talk about how you can see more patients. There's no clinician here that wants to see more patients during the day—but that’s the perspective if you’re a health care executive,” said Dr. Whyte.
And, he noted, this isn’t about physicians telling everyone else how it should be done. “We should be involving patients and patient groups from the beginning—not as an afterthought,” Dr. Whyte said.
The AMA’s survey research on AI (PDF) shows that physicians are largely enthusiastic about the potential of AI in health care, with 68% of those surveyed last year seeing at least some advantage to the use of AI in their practice—up from 63% in 2023. The survey also found that physicians’ use of AI rose from 38% in 2023 to 66% of physicians reporting they used some type of AI tool in practice in 2024.
Learn about steps taken at the 2025 AMA Interim Meeting in November to boost health AI training across the medical education continuum.
Big questions drive the future
Dr. Whyte delved further into the AMA Center for Digital Health’s four focus areas. The first, he noted during the event at MATTER that happened weeks ahead of President Trump’s draft executive order on AI, is policy and regulatory leadership.
“The fundamental question is: do you regulate before you try, or do you try and then you regulate? Too much regulation is going to decrease action, but too little regulation potentially could put patients at harm because it’s a Wild Wild` West,” said Dr. Whyte. It would be great if physicians could use wearable data to help assess and analyze their patient’s condition. But once a device gives a medical diagnosis, that requires a different level of regulation, he added.
How do you determine what the right amount of regulation should be? “It's probably based somewhat on risk, but we should be having that discussion,” he said, recommending that AMA convene with a variety of stakeholders, including state and federal regulators to find answers to these questions.
Dr. Whyte posed other key questions that will be pivotal in the shaping of future health AI implementation:
- How do you protect patients and their privacy while producing real innovation that has an impact on patient outcomes?
- What about education and training? How well do physicians understand these tools? How do they communicate to patients what the right role is for these tools?
- How do patients feel about interacting with chatbots? Are they comfortable with talking to a chatbot about anxiety and depression? How do physicians factor that into their thinking about the role of these tools?
- Should physicians believe the accuracy of data that comes from a smartwatch that monitors things such as sleep apnea?
- If a physician relies on these tools and they give wrong information, who's liable? Is it the technology developer, or is it the physician?
On that last point, Dr. Whyte detailed an example. What if a physician uses a generative AI tool in practice and the technology gives inaccurate information to the patient? That physician may be liable because they’re a covered entity, cautioned Dr. Whyte.
In an interview with AMA, Collens said he appreciated the vision Dr. Whyte outlined for the future direction of health care innovation.
“The kinds of questions that he's asking are the kind of highly provocative questions that need to be asked. The questions about the role of the physician … do we have the right payment structures, what's the right regulatory construct?” said Collens. The goal is to get to a point in the future where technology is woven into the health care experience in a way that it isn't today, he added.
Learn more with the AMA about the emerging landscape of health care AI. And find out how to apply AI to transform health care with the “AMA ChangeMedEd® Artificial Intelligence in Health Care Series.”
