The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) recently held its 2024 Exploratory Workshop titled “The Evolving Landscape of Human Research with AI – Putting Ethics to Practice” (the Workshop). Although the individual presentations and panel discussions throughout the Workshop covered a range of topics and raised a number of interesting questions and hypotheticals, the panelists did not draw any specific conclusions or reach any kind of consensus about next steps to address the critical issues. Even so, the panelists provided some crucial insights that companies and regulators must grapple with in the context of expanding use cases for AI in human research and creating rules governing such uses.

As we enter into the final months of 2024, new developments in the administration of the 340B Drug Pricing Program signal that additional reform may be on the way. Although recent revisions to the 340B program’s administrative dispute resolution (ADR) process represented a positive development in program reform, many questions remain as to how the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) along with Congress may resolve stakeholder concerns with the drug pricing program’s future.

As the first state law to regulate the results of Artificial Intelligence System (AI System) use, Colorado’s SB24-205, “Concerning Consumer Protections in Interactions with Artificial Intelligence Systems” (the Act), has generated plenty of cross-industry interest, for good reason. In some ways similar to the risk-based approach taken by the European Union (EU) in the EU AI Act, the Act aims to regulate developers and deployers of AI Systems, which are defined by the Act as “any machine-based system that, for any explicit or implicit objective, infers from the inputs the system receives how to generate outputs, including content, decisions, predictions, or recommendations, that can influence physical or virtual environments.”

On April 18, 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) released a new Final Rule for its oft-criticized 340B Administrative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Program (2024 Final Rule).

Preventing discrimination and bias in connection with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in health care is among the principal current focuses of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and was among the health care directives in the recent Biden Administration Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence (Executive Order). Consistent with these priorities, on April 26, 2024, the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released an unpublished version of a new final rule under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that aims to broadly address inequity across health care but also requires certain actions of entities covered under Section 1557 around their use of AI in clinical decision-making (Final Rule).

As promised in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) concept paper in December 2023, the agency published voluntary health care and public health cybersecurity performance goals (HPH CPGs) in January 2024 and then proposed in the HHS FY 2025 Budget to establish certain HPH CPG compliance incentives and penalties for hospitals.

New Mexico recently became the latest state to receive Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) approval to expand the state’s behavioral health service offerings through mobile crisis intervention teams. Under its new state plan amendment, among other items, New Mexico will make available mobile (i.e., outside of a hospital or other facility setting) crisis and mobile response and stabilization services for individuals at the location in which they are experiencing a crisis, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year. Mobile crisis services include stabilization of the person in crisis, prevention of further deterioration, and provision of immediate treatment and intervention but may also include telephonic follow-up interventions, such as additional intervention and de-escalation services and coordination with other supports and community partners, for up to 72 hours after the initial mobile response. New Mexico also will offer children’s mobile response and stabilization services (MRSS), which are mobile crisis services but specific to child, youth, and families and include up to 56 days of stabilization services.

As the Mintz Health Law team welcomes the beginning of 2024, many of its members take a moment to reflect on the exciting growth of the Health Law Practice, opportunities to partner with clients on complex legal issues, and the celebration of numerous milestones.