Healthcare organizations are embracing agentic AI—systems that can take independent actions—more quickly than they are updating the policies meant to oversee them, according to a report covered by Healthcare Dive. The gap between deployment and governance is wide enough that patient safety may be compromised, the report suggests.
Imprivata's chief medical and growth officer warns that rolling out these tools without guardrails creates real clinical risk. Unlike earlier AI assistants that only offered recommendations, agentic systems can execute tasks on their own, making the stakes of an error higher and the need for oversight more urgent.
The report's central message is that speed of innovation has outrun the checks and balances typical in healthcare IT. It implies that hospitals and vendors need to build governance into the rollout process itself, rather than treating it as an afterthought. No specific incidents are cited, but the warning is explicit: the current pace is unsafe without stronger controls.