Health data for developing AI: Navigating privacy laws

Deciphering complex areas of health policy and privacy regulations is often best left to attorneys or those who helped craft or promulgate those regulations. That made former Department of Health & Human Services HIPAA regulator Adam Greene, JD, MPH, FHMISS — now a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP — the perfect guide to help make sense of the compliance landscape at the 2025 HIMSS Global Conference, where nearly every attendee seemed to grapple with some intersection of AI and health data.

AI’s potential and privacy challenges in healthcare

Healthcare administrators looking to innovate must balance the promising capabilities of AI with existing privacy laws. AI presents breakthroughs in early disease detection, clinical decision support, claims coding automation, EHR documentation, and fraud detection. Yet Greene emphasized that while AI’s potential is substantial, healthcare providers must carefully navigate how AI initiatives interact with privacy regulations.

“How does this all fit with a set of laws that, on the most part, are about 25 years old?” he asked.