{"id":61536,"date":"2026-06-04T02:02:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T02:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/61536\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T02:02:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T02:02:23","slug":"could-ai-renew-your-prescriptions-in-utah-one-already-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/61536\/","title":{"rendered":"Could AI renew your prescriptions? In Utah, one already can"},"content":{"rendered":"

Utah is in the midst of an experiment to let AI renew some prescriptions. A company, Doctronic<\/a>, promises easier and cheaper care but some doctors fear patients may get hurt. <\/p>\n

Patients on medicine for high cholesterol, diabetes, birth control, depression or a host of other conditions, answer a few questions, verify their identity, and voila! The prescription is refilled. <\/p>\n

Doctronic co-founder Matt Pavelle<\/a> said since this experiment is so novel, in addition to billboards and commercials, the company is turning to humans.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a street team we have people who walk around inside Salt Lake [City],\u201d Pavelle said. \u201cThey go up to strangers and, \u2018Hey do you have a prescription? Do you want to try this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The yearlong experiment is supposed to make it easier and cheaper to get medicine. It can take weeks or months to get into the doctor, and can cost over $100. In the first phase<\/a>, doctors reviewed each renewal. In the next phase, only 10% of prescriptions will be reviewed by a human. <\/p>\n

Utah\u2019s Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy which was created in 2024<\/a>, waived normal licensing rules to allow the AI to make clinical decisions. The state\u2019s medical licensing board was blindsided. They pressed the state to pause the program<\/a>, fearing patients could get hurt. But regulators are pushing ahead. <\/p>\n

Dr. Brooks Bahr, a dermatologist and president-elect of the Utah Medical Association has mixed feelings about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re excited about cost savings and efficiency savings and all that, but we want to be able to preserve the physician-patient relationship,\u201d Bahr said. \u201cI think that’s the thing we’re most worried about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doctronic is not charging for the service now. Patients just have to pay the cost of the medicine. Most of the company\u2019s revenue still comes from a televisit service available across the country with human doctors.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s still a bit murky is Doctronic\u2019s accountability for mistakes. Normally, the doctor signing the scrip is responsible for any problems the patient has. Michelle Mello, a health law professor at Stanford University, said it\u2019s unclear whether the company behind the AI will have the same responsibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe courts have not worked that out, mostly because they have not been asked to yet,\u201d Mello said. \u201cWe don’t have evidence of a lot of those kinds of claims percolating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doctronic says it has a first-of-its-kind AI malpractice policy. Mello said while there’s a lot of uncertainty, most of the 190 medications<\/a> the pilot covers are low risk. She does warn that it\u2019s important to watch out for scope creep.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething I see is that we say \u2018yes\u2019 to a particular AI deployment,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd pretty quickly, we end up admitting a much larger presence of AI in healthcare than we originally envisioned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Expansion is already happening fast. Utah just gave the greenlight for another AI company \u2014 Legion Health<\/a> \u2014 to renew some psychiatric medications. And Doctronic is in talks to move into Arizona and Wyoming. <\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Utah is in the midst of an experiment to let AI renew some prescriptions. A company, Doctronic, promises…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,2536,2401,35242,35241],"class_list":["post-61536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-doctors","tag-health-technology","tag-medication","tag-prescription"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}