This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of ColoradoBiz under the title “Colorado Leads in Regulating the Use of AI in Health Care.”
From revolutionizing diagnostics and drug discovery to streamlining administrative tasks, artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing the medical field.
But as AI systems become integrated into the nation’s healthcare infrastructure, questions arise regarding data privacyalgorithmic bias and the impact on the human element of care.
Colorado is at the forefront of the debate. It is the first state to adopt regulations governing the use of technology in health care systems. Colorado’s Artificial Intelligence Act is scheduled to take effect June 30, 2026, and will impose governance and disclosure requirements on healthcare providers deploying AI systems.
According to an article co-authored by Charles Gass, senior attorney at Foley & Lardner in Denver, the law “primarily seeks to mitigate algorithmic discrimination, defined as AI-based decision-making that results in unlawful differential treatment or disparate impact on individuals based on certain characteristics, such as race, disability, age, or language proficiency. The law aims to prevent AI from reinforcing existing biases or making decisions that unfairly disadvantage particular groups.”
If it goes into effect, the law will be enforced by the Colorado Attorney General.
Although various bills have been proposed at the federal level, Congress has not approved legislation addressing AI in healthcare.
The most recent development is a Republican-backed bill that would block states from regulating AI models for the next decade, with some exceptions. If passed, it would supersede Colorado law.
“AI is going to be used, in some cases, without patients’ permission,” Gass said. “Patients should ask if their provider is using AI to help them administratively or clinically. »
One Gass client said he was made uncomfortable when the healthcare provider said the AI would be used to take notes and asked that it not be used.
“The reaction from the supplier was almost disgruntled,” Gass said. “Patients should consider whether they are using AI to help them administratively or clinically. In some cases, it will be used without their permission.”
Although AI holds promise for transforming healthcare by improving diagnoses and personalizing treatment plans, the data it learns from can cause the technology to introduce bias.
Data from certain demographics can lead to poor performance of AI systems for underrepresented groups like women, racial and ethnic minorities, or older patients.
For example, AI models trained primarily on lighter skin tones have been shown to be less accurate in detecting skin cancer in people with darker skin, and algorithms for diagnosing heart disease may be less accurate for women if trained primarily on male data.
“Certain clinical conditions manifest differently in different populations,” Gass said. “If it’s just training on a certain population, that’s where we really need to rely on our providers to stay in the driver’s seat of patient care. They need to be listening and aware of patient needs and not relying on them too much.”
Firms using AI for planning also need to be mindful of language barriers. If a patient’s primary language is Spanish and the AI tool doesn’t understand it and the appointment doesn’t happen, that could be considered discrimination, Gass said.
“It’s probably going to become increasingly difficult to reach a human, so there are concerns about how these tools are trained,” he said.
Increase satisfaction and combat burnout
Despite the legal complexities of using AI in healthcare, it is a useful tool for providers.
Denver Healthfor example, uses Nabla’s ambient AI assistant to summarize conversations between healthcare providers and their patients.
“Nabla has very high levels of security and privacy safeguards,” said Dr. Daniel Kortsch, deputy chief medical information officer at Denver Health. “The transcript is heavily encrypted and available only to the medical provider. No audio files or transcripts are stored.”
Patients report higher satisfaction with their experience because the doctor interacts more with them rather than entering information into a computer.
But if a patient asks the provider not to use AI, their wishes will be respected, Kortsch said.
Another benefit of AI is reduced burnout among Denver Health employees, which has improved employee retention.
“Providers are more willing to continue their clinical hours and work at Denver Health,” Kortsch said. “The staff told me they were considering stopping, but they didn’t because of this product. A doctor gave me a box of chocolates when we started it. A lot of people take their work home and sit in their pajamas to type up their notes.”
Kortsch also notes that Epic Systemsthe world’s largest electronic health record, created Epic Cosmos, which uses its data sets to improve patient care. Cosmos can predict the impact of certain medications on blood pressure or diabetes care, he said.
“Ambient AI is the most transformative product I have seen since the advent of the electronic health record,” Kortsch said. “Those kinds of things need to be embraced. »
Transforming rural health care
Artificial intelligence can also be useful in rural areas where people have difficulty accessing healthcare.
Colorado State University is part of a multi-institutional project that is developing mobile clinics equipped with AI systems to address gaps in rural health care.
The $25 million project, led by the University of Michigan, is funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, which supports the development of transformative biomedical and health discoveries.
The goal is to develop AI systems capable of performing diagnostics, running and interpreting tests, and performing procedures from a mobile setup stationed in remote areas.
The system may be able to provide instructions on performing procedures, such as ultrasounds, that some providers may not be familiar with.
“A general practitioner at a local clinic may not have the knowledge of some specialized machines,” said Nikhil Krishnaswamy, assistant professor of computer science at CSU. “An AI system can guide them through specialized procedures to obtain images that can be sent to a radiologist.”
AI systems are not designed to replace human judgment but rather to assist.
“You don’t want AI to make diagnoses without human intervention,” Krishnaswamy said. “You have to have the human in the loop to make that final decision.”
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