On October 7th, Nolla Health, a Utah-based healthcare startup, launched a pilot program aimed at enabling artificial intelligence to independently prescribe medications. The initiative focuses on skincare and acne treatment, allowing users to pay a monthly subscription fee of just $5 to scan their face via a mobile app and complete a medical history form.

The AI software analyzes facial images to generate an acne severity score and directly prescribes treatment from eight approved options when appropriate. This move breaks the traditional boundaries of AI as an auxiliary diagnostic tool, and is the first attempt to grant AI software some degree of independent prescription authority.

AI Healthcare

This one-year pilot project was carried out under the coordination of the Utah Department of Commerce's AI Policy Office and the Medical Licensure Board, with a phased safety regulatory strategy. In the initial first phase, the first 100 AI prescriptions must be reviewed by a licensed physician before being sent to the pharmacy; in the second phase, AI will be allowed to treat 400 patients independently, with physicians only conducting weekly retrospective reviews; in the third phase, doctors will need to review at least 10% of the prescription decisions each month.

The Utah Medical Association stated that this project does not require their direct approval, and that such specific AI applications are safe and controllable as long as they are strictly limited to acne treatment. However, they do not currently support expanding AI's independent prescription authority to other complex medical fields.

Although the industry generally believes that AI's integration into healthcare is irreversible, the traditional medical community remains cautious about its rapid advancement. Most current studies indicate that doctors remain one of the hardest professions to be fully replaced by AI. Experts from various parties have called for the ultimate decision-making power in medical care to remain with human physicians.