1052 - Should AI Renew Your Prescription?
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2026
⏱️ 19 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
About this episode:
In a first-of-its-kind program, the state of Utah is partnering with an AI health platform to offer prescription renewals to nearly 200 medications. In this episode: the director of the state's office of artificial intelligence explains how the program works, responds to concerns that have been raised, and discusses what's next.
Guest:
Zach Boyd, PhD, is the director of the Office of Artificial Intelligence for the State of Utah.
Host:
Dr. Josh Sharfstein is distinguished professor of the practice in Health Policy and Management, a pediatrician, and former secretary of Maryland's Health Department.
Show links and related content:
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Doctronic AI Regulatory Mitigation Agreement—Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy
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Artificial intelligence begins prescribing medications in Utah—Politico
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How Pharmacists Improve Community Health—Public Health On Call (October 2025)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhh.edu. |
| 0:23.8 | That's public health question at jh.h.u.org for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:31.2 | Hey listeners, it's Lindsay Smith Rogers, and today we're talking about Utah's experiment with artificial intelligence in health care. |
| 0:39.3 | Zach Boyd is the director of the Office of AI Policy in the state of Utah. |
| 0:43.6 | He's overseeing a program that waives state regulations on certain uses of artificial intelligence for a trial period. |
| 0:51.1 | He talks to Dr. Josh Sharfstein about first application in health care, an AI program that can |
| 0:56.6 | refill prescriptions for up to 200 medications. They discuss the origins of this effort, concerns that |
| 1:02.9 | have been raised inside and outside of Utah, and what's next? Let's listen. Zach Boyd, it is great to |
| 1:09.2 | have you on public health on call. How's today going for you? It's a good day so far. Excellent. What's the weather out there in Utah? Well, it started out about 50 this morning. It's supposed to be like 90 by the end of the day, so changing by the minute. Okay, sounds good. A few other things are changing by the minute. the minute. You are the leader of the Office of AI Policy in the state of Utah, and in January, you |
| 1:33.8 | launched the first state-approved program in the country that allows an AI program to participate |
| 1:40.3 | in medical decision-making by having artificial intelligence do prescription |
| 1:45.2 | repels. And that made a lot of news. |
| 1:47.4 | Yeah, it was wild. You know, this is a pilot. It's still in the earliest stages. There's |
| 1:53.2 | full human supervision over everything. But it just seems like, you know, a state entertaining |
| 1:57.6 | the possibility of this and beginning to gather data on how governance |
| 2:01.4 | might look has just really captured a lot of people's imagination. |
| 2:05.0 | It certainly has, but before we get into the details, I'm interested in how you got here. |
| 2:10.6 | Tell me a little bit about yourself and the office and what led up to the moment of launching a |
| 2:15.3 | program like this. |
| 2:16.7 | Yeah, so my background is in academia. |
... |
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