Artificial Intelligence (AI), when scaled responsibly, holds significant potential for healthcare systems. It has the potential to transform how healthcare operates, is delivered and is experienced by patients. Yet significant barriers to its adoption remain, including fragmented data foundations, regulatory uncertainty, and gaps in governance and workforce capacity. Responsibly scaling AI in health requires a balance between market forces (that move fast), health culture (doing no harm) and reaching every person (through scale).

There are well-documented risks associated with the use of AI in healthcare, such as skewed data, privacy and security risks, insufficient transparency or oversight, and the potential for job displacement and de-personalisation. While caution is necessary, there is also risk in inaction.

The report reviews OECD Members’ progress in taking action to advance the responsible scale of AI in their health systems. It is clear that while progress is being made, there is still significant work to be done in areas of trust and capacity building; strengthening data quality, access, protection, and use; and leadership to guide and oversee action in the implementation of AI in Health.

To help support actions toward the responsible scale of AI in health, a policy checklist was developed to guide decision making and prioritisation and to avoid blind spots. The checklist is organised into four pillars: 

1. establishing enablers (for data foundations, assuring and scaling AI, and capacity building)
2. implementing guardrails (to oversee and monitor progress toward common objectives)
3. engaging meaningfully with the public, providers and industry
4. deploying trustworthy AI. 

Across the four pillars, nine main policy categories and 43 questions have emerged as critical for responsibly scaling the benefits of AI in health. A shared recognition has emerged: that coherent, cross-border compatible policies are essential to balance innovation with safety, and economic opportunity with building public trust.