From WisPolitics.com/WisBusiness.com …
— As Wisconsin lawmakers grapple with how to regulate the use of AI in healthcare, tools for both consumers and clinicians are quickly evolving to play a larger, more autonomous role in the medical field.
“There’s many tools out there now,” Frank Meyers of the Federation of State Medical Boards said yesterday during a committee meeting. “Just about a year and a half ago, it was very difficult finding high-level tools from legitimate providers. Now they’re everywhere.”
The meeting of the 2026 Legislative Council Study Committee on the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care featured presentations from industry representatives, regulators, educators and care providers. They discussed how AI is being rapidly adopted in healthcare and what that means for those tasked with keeping it in check.
Meyers, the federation’s director of regulatory innovation and member services, noted Verona’s Epic Systems has built various AI applications into its ubiquitous electronic health records systems.
At the same time, Microsoft’s Dragon Copilot AI platform is built on an ambient scribe tool that was one of the first on the market, he said. The technology listens in on the clinical encounter while documenting and summarizing what happens.
“In the past, that’s really all it did … but those have significantly advanced, to the point where now they are entering information into the medical record itself, they’re being built into automatic prescription renewals so they can pre-load renewals for the clinician’s sign-off,” Meyers said. “Or they’re checking medical contraindications, they’re doing some research surfacing relevant medical journal entries.”
Along with these applications for clinical use, patients too now have more AI options than ever. That includes Amazon’s Health AI program that can read patient records and explain lab results, answer questions about symptoms and route requests to providers. ChatGPT also has a consumer-side health tool for analyzing medical records and related data.
“It’s not meant to provide diagnostic or medical advice, but like with everything with generative AI … if you push it certain ways, you can always kind of get it to respond in certain different ways,” Meyers said.
Meanwhile, Dr. Richard Bruce with UW-Madison’s Department of Radiology yesterday highlighted how AI is supercharging the scientific side of healthcare. He noted the technology is producing “much better” imaging quality based on available data, lower radiation doses and fewer errors — “all things that are slam-dunk home runs from an imaging perspective.”
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— At a GOP convention in Dallas, U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden touted rural healthcare investments in a Republican-authored reconciliation package while attacking Democrats for “shamefully” voting against it.
Van Orden, R-Prairie du Chien, late yesterday afternoon highlighted the $50 billion Rural Healthcare Transformation Program. Wisconsin is set to receive over $200 million in the first year of the five-year program.
“From Washington to Wisconsin, Democrats spent months demonizing the tax cuts we delivered, and now that millions of dollars are returning back home to rural communities they’re rushing to take credit for one of the largest investments,” Van Orden said.
— The Medical College of Wisconsin’s Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment is offering $250,000 grants for health improvement projects, the college announced today.
Funding from the endowment’s Community-Led Momentum Grants program can go to 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(6) nonprofits or government entities in the state that apply alongside an eligible MCW faculty member. Grants will cover project expenses for a two-year period starting in July 2027.
The endowment is requesting letters of intent by Oct. 26, followed by a merit review and invitations to provide full proposals by Feb. 22.
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