AI can now prescribe acne medication in Utah – but not quite on its own
AI’s record in diagnosing health issues is hardly spotless.
Prescription medication. Photo by 18percentgrey/Shutterstock
Follow us
- Utah is testing Nolla Health’s AI app for initial topical acne prescriptions in a one-year pilot.
- The pilot only covers Utah adults with mild-to-moderate acne and excludes severe cases.
- Two Utah-licensed doctors will review every prescription at first, with oversight set to decrease later.
- Nolla must report adverse events within 24 hours and compare AI decisions with doctors’ judgments.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
As people are still reluctant to trust AI when making key medical decisions, the state of Utah is beginning a 1-year pilot scheme allowing Nolla Health’s AI system to issue initial prescriptions for certain acne medications.
The state emphasizes that this is a narrowly scoped regulatory experiment.
During the pilot, which is limited to Utah adults with mild-to-moderate acne, Nolla Health's app will be used to analyze photographs of a patient's face and assess acne. Then, the app should determine whether a treatment from a predefined list of topical creams and gels is appropriate.
The agreement with the startup, operated by Magic Health Inc. and Magic Health Services LLC, excludes oral medications and isotretinoin and does not allow treatment of severe acne.
Also, safety exclusions, such as pregnancy and a weakened immune system, among others, further narrow the cases when this app would be allowed to prescribe creams and gels.
Two Utah-licensed physicians will review every prescription during the first stage of the trial. According to the Los Angeles Times, the first stage would involve 100 patients, while the second one would involve 400. Therefore, human oversight should decrease as the pilot progresses.
In either case, the company is obliged to report adverse events to the state within 24 hours. Also, the company will need to report the rate at which AI decisions agree with those of reviewing physicians.
Track record still mixed
Meanwhile, Nolla CEO Luis Wenus told the Times that a $5 monthly app fee would make dermatological treatment more accessible.
The Nolla Health pilot is just a part of the wider Utah experiment. Now, the same regulatory expansion includes AI pilots regarding pelvic-floor physical therapy and future healthcare pilots at the University of Utah Health and Intermountain Health. As reported by Cybernews, the state already had AI pilots for prescription renewals.
Meanwhile, as the world is still learning to use AI for medical purposes, the results are mixed.
For example, last year, Harvard researcher Pranav Rajpurkar said that while AI models could excel at medical board exams, they still struggled with the basic back-and-forth of a doctor's visit.
However, since then, AI-powered solutions have evolved. For example, researchers have developed an AI system that helps clinicians know when AI is wrong.
