Rounds. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Sens. Mike Rounds and Martin Heinrich are introducing a bill Thursday that would create a pandemic preparedness and response program at HHS that uses artificial intelligence, their offices told Axios.
Why it matters: It's one of the first health-related bills among the AI legislation that's being rolled out by the senators in Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's bipartisan AI working group.
What's inside: The MedShield Act would create a program at HHS aimed at using current and evolving AI technologies in a single continuously operating system to address five pandemic prevention and response needs:
- Implementing a global surveillance system for pathogens
- Accelerating vaccine development
- Developing rapid therapeutic treatments
- Optimizing pandemic response strategies using AI-enabled modeling
- Streamlining and enhancing rapid manufacturing of vaccines, therapeutics and materials.
If that sounds similar to Operation Warp Speed, it's because the bill is aimed at avoiding that kind of crisis-driven initiative by seeking to plan proactively for future outbreaks.
- It would codify a recommendation from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.
Yes, but: The legislation calls for $2 billion in new spending over five years, with $300 million in the first year to launch and maintain the MedShield program.
- With Congress gridlocked on health agency funding levels this session, and House GOP interest in overhauling the CDC and NIH, getting such a large amount of funding for pandemic prevention feels like a long shot.
Between the lines: Rounds has been a vocal advocate of investing in new technologies like AI to solve medical problems such as cancer — a cause driven by his late wife's battle with a rare cancer several years ago.
- You can read more in Rounds' sit-down interview last year with Axios on how he sees AI helping solve more urgent health care issues.
