New York, NY — [June 1, 2026] —As hospitals and health systems rapidly adopt artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, a new study by investigators at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai finds that the policies governing health care AI are expanding quickly but remain fragmented across regulators, governments, and standards organizations.
Their findings were published in today's online issue of npj Digital Medicine [https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-026-02734-y].
The researchers analyzed 240 health care AI-related policies published between 2016 and 2025 using their newly developed framework called the Health & AI Policy Index . The analysis found that oversight efforts are accelerating worldwide, though no single, unified framework currently exists to guide how AI should be deployed, monitored, and governed in clinical settings.
The findings come as AI tools are increasingly being used in patient care, diagnostics, administrative workflows, and clinical decision support, raising growing questions about safety, accountability, transparency, and implementation standards.
"Artificial intelligence is moving into health care faster than many organizations can fully evaluate or govern it," says lead author Will Moss, a health care AI policy intern at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "Our goal was to create a clearer picture of the rapidly evolving policy landscape and help health systems better understand the governance challenges emerging alongside AI adoption."
The researchers found that governance efforts are developing through a patchwork of regulations, institutional guidance, technical standards, and policy initiatives rather than through a centralized system. The authors say this fragmented environment may create operational and compliance challenges for health systems attempting to responsibly integrate AI technologies.
"Health systems are increasingly recognizing that successful AI adoption requires more than just implementing new tools," says senior author Girish N. Nadkarni, MD, MPH , Chair of the Windreich Department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health , Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health , and Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Chief AI Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System. "It also depends on strong oversight, internal governance structures, and clear accountability around how these technologies are used."
The study also highlights the growing role academic medical centers and large health systems may play in shaping real-world AI governance practices as adoption accelerates.
"Questions around transparency, patient safety, and accountability are becoming central to the future of health care AI," says Dr. Nadkarni. "Our work helps identify where policy efforts are growing, where gaps remain, and where additional coordination may be needed."
To conduct the study, researchers used the Health & AI Policy Index to catalog and analyze health care AI-related policies published over nearly a decade. The framework was designed to help track emerging policy trends and better organize the rapidly growing body of AI policy activity affecting health care delivery.
The authors say the findings may help policymakers, researchers, and health systems better navigate the increasingly complex governance environment surrounding clinical AI technologies.
Future work may include analyzing how governance approaches differ across jurisdictions and how health systems operationalize AI governance in real-world clinical settings.
The paper is titled "Mapping AI regulation in health care with the Health & AI Policy Index."
The authors, as listed in the journal, are Will Moss, Benjamin S. Glicksberg, Sabina Lim, Alexis Zebrowski, and Girish N. Nadkarni.
To view competing interests, see the paper at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-026-02734-y .
For more Mount Sinai artificial intelligence news, visit https://icahn.mssm.edu/about/artificial-intelligence .
About Mount Sinai's Windreich Department of AI and Human Health
Led by Girish N. Nadkarni, MD, MPH—an international authority on the safe, effective, and ethical use of AI in health care—Mount Sinai's Windreich Department of AI and Human Health is the first of its kind at a U.S. medical school, pioneering transformative advancements at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human health.
The Department is committed to leveraging AI in a responsible, effective, ethical, and safe manner to transform research, clinical care, education, and operations. By bringing together world-class AI expertise, cutting-edge infrastructure, and unparalleled computational power, the department is advancing breakthroughs in multi-scale, multimodal data integration while streamlining pathways for rapid testing and translation into practice.
The Department benefits from dynamic collaborations across Mount Sinai, including with the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai—a partnership between the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering in Potsdam, Germany, and the Mount Sinai Health System—which complements its mission by advancing data-driven approaches to improve patient care and health outcomes.
At the heart of this innovation is the renowned Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which serves as a central hub for learning and collaboration. This unique integration enables dynamic partnerships across institutes, academic departments, hospitals, and outpatient centers, driving progress in disease prevention, improving treatments for complex illnesses, and elevating quality of life on a global scale.
In 2024, the Department's innovative NutriScan AI application, developed by the Mount Sinai Health System Clinical Data Science team in partnership with Department faculty, earned Mount Sinai Health System the prestigious Hearst Health Prize. NutriScan is designed to facilitate faster identification and treatment of malnutrition in hospitalized patients. This machine learning tool improves malnutrition diagnosis rates and resource utilization, demonstrating the impactful application of AI in health care.
