Earning Trust for AI in Health 2025

The importance of public–private partnerships for AI in health3 Public–private partnerships are critical to leveraging the private sector’s unique capabilities to build high-quality AI technologies that meet the needs of the health sector. The private sector has a unique role to play in promoting the deployment of high-quality AI technologies that can earn the trust of the health sector in the current fragmented landscape. PPPs allow for pooling skills, funding and risks in order to accelerate innovation. Prior to the widespread emergence of AI technologies, several PPPs were established to help harmonize the regulatory landscape for medical devices, such as the International Medical Devices Regulators Forum (IMDRF) and the Global Harmonization Working Party (GHWP). In recent years, a number of PPPs have emerged specifically for AI technologies in health that coexist with, and build on top of, the work of the IMDRF, GHWP and other medical devices-focused PPPs, for example: –The Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) was created to harmonize standards and AI health reporting. It is a community made up of health systems, public and private organizations, academic bodies, patient advocacy groups as well as AI and data-science practitioners.29 –The Trustworthy and Responsible AI Network (TRAIN), spearheaded by Microsoft and various health organizations, was launched in 2024 to promote ethical AI use, focusing on safe and equitable AI deployment. Private-sector involvement in the policy development process (see Figure 1) is important to co-create high-quality guidelines for AI technologies in health. Most AI technologies for health are developed by private innovators.30 These innovators can provide critical insights into how their evidence-generation capabilities compare to local guidelines detailing the desired evidence requirements in order to help identify a balanced evidence framework that is feasible for innovators and yields high-quality insights for regulators.3.1 The role of public–private partnerships in regulating medical devices, including software 3.2 Private sector capabilities can help test and operationalize the regulatory process Earning Trust for AI in Health: A Collaborative Path Forward 13