Trump orders $50M for AI in pediatric cancer research
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President Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy at the White House on Tuesday. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
President Trump signed an order Tuesday directing his administration to invest $50 million in AI-driven pediatric cancer research.
Why it matters: The move is part of a broader embrace of artificial intelligence across federal agencies but comes as the administration is slashing biomedical research spending and pausing grants.
Driving the news: The order directs the presidentially appointed Make America Healthy Again Commission to work with the Office of Science and Technology Policy to harness data from a childhood cancer data initiative Trump established during his first term, OSTP director Michael Kratsios said.
- The data initiative's budget is being doubled by this investment.
- "Leveraging this data infrastructure, researchers will deploy artificial intelligence to improve clinical trials, sharpen diagnoses, fine-tune treatments, unlock cures and strengthen prevention strategies," Kratsios said.
- For example, researchers will build scalable models to predict how a child's body responds to therapies, in order to forecast cancer progression and minimize treatment side effects.
- AI could help guide researchers to treatments in the future that "will have a higher cure rate" and fewer side effects, said National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya.
Between the lines: A White House official said the effort builds on existing technology but declined to name any companies or specific software.
- There will be a broad call for research proposals using AI to fight childhood cancer, officials said. The effort will also harness electronic health records and claims data to inform research and clinical trial design, they said.
Reality check: The Trump administration proposed a roughly 40% cut to NIH's budget over the summer. While Congress has resisted such a move, cancer researchers have raised alarms about the damage funding freezes have had an institutions around the country.
- A White House official dismissed such concerns.
- "The President is committed to making the United States the world leader in biomedicine in the 21st Century, just as it was in the 20th Century, and the the idea that the President isn't committed to cutting cancer is just incorrect," the official said.
Go deeper: How AI will — and won't — change health care
