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President Biden ordered the nation’s leading health agencies on Monday to develop a plan for regulating artificial intelligence tools already widely in use within hospitals, insurance companies, and other health-related businesses. (Ross, 10/30)

President Joe Biden signed a sweeping executive order and invoked the Defense Production Act on Monday to establish the first set of standards on the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare and other industries. As the hype, promise and usage of AI has grown in healthcare, health system leaders and developers have sought more concrete guardrails on its usage, particularly for clinical purposes. Biden signed the order at an afternoon AI-focused event at the White House. (Perna and Turner, 10/30)

In medicine, the cautionary tales about the unintended effects of artificial intelligence are already legendary. There was the program meant to predict when patients would develop sepsis, a deadly bloodstream infection, that triggered a litany of false alarms. Another, intended to improve follow-up care for the sickest patients, appeared to deepen troubling health disparities. (Jewett, 10/30)

Healthcare providers that engage in so-called information blocking to impede appropriate access to patient information in electronic health records would be subject to significant penalties under a proposed rule published Monday. ... “HHS is committed to developing and implementing policies that discourage information blocking to help people and the health providers they allow to have access to their electronic health information,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a news release. (Bennett, 10/30)

GSK Plc will pay 23andMe Holding Co. $20 million for access to the genetic-testing company’s vast trove of consumer DNA data, extending a five-year collaboration that’s allowed the drugmaker to mine genetic data as it researches new medications. Under the new agreement, 23andMe will provide GSK with one year of access to anonymized DNA data from the approximately 80% of gene-testing customers who have agreed to share their information for research, 23andMe said in a statement Monday. The genetic-testing company will also provide data-analysis services to GSK. (Brown, 10/30)

When patients go shopping today, they might find themselves checking out with more than the vitamins or bulk toilet paper on their list. Several retailers have recently launched telehealth programs that let patients pick their medical concern off a menu of options, from hair loss and erectile dysfunction to acne and ear infections. Then they pay cash — no insurance accepted — to have a text or video visit with a provider. (Palmer, 10/30)

Many of the state’s more than 75,000 farmworkers lack high-speed internet, limiting their access to digital services that have been shown to improve health outcomes for people in rural communities. The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Rural Health hopes to address the divide with a “digital equity initiative” funded by the National Institutes of Health. Over the next five years, DHHS will receive nearly $6 million from the federal agency to help connect agricultural workers and their families to affordable broadband. (Baxley, 10/31)