FDA & CDC Testing OpenAI and Anthropic AI Models for Public Health

Public health departments across the United States are set to trial generative AI tools under a new structured programme involving the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI), OpenAI, Anthropic, and Accenture.

The initiative — called the Public Health Use Case and Learning Scaling Engine (PULSE) — will support trials across 10 state, local, tribal, or territorial jurisdictions, with the goal of producing implementation guidance for public health agencies considering similar AI deployments.

“Every major technological transformation succeeds or fails based on trust, governance and execution. PULSE will support agencies in this endeavour, and is specifically designed for practical implementation.”

— Dr. David Lakey, former Texas Health Commissioner

OpenAI and Anthropic have each donated 10 enterprise licences with capacity for up to 2,000 public health practitioners. Accenture will oversee participant onboarding and help develop implementation playbooks based on trial outcomes. CHAI's leadership council will select participating jurisdictions and assign practitioners to communities focused on specific use cases.

📋 Five Public Health Use Cases

PULSE will focus on five defined application areas for generative AI in public health settings:

• 🧬 Biosurveillance and drug-wave prediction
• 📍 Social determinants of health (SDoH) mapping
• ⚙️ Operations, efficiency, and community-feedback analysis
• 🌐 Public communications and multilingual translation hub
• 🏥 Automated clinical-data retrieval and FHIR query engine

🔒 Data Privacy, HIPAA, and Security Considerations

Some proposed applications may involve demographic, geographic, clinical, or population-health data. CHAI has not disclosed whether pilots will use identifiable records, de-identified information, synthetic data, or aggregated datasets.

The US Department of Health and Human Services requires organisations covered by HIPAA to protect certain electronic health information. Its cloud-computing guidance states that regulated organisations and service providers must meet HIPAA requirements when cloud systems create, receive, maintain, or transmit electronic protected health information.

OpenAI states that inputs and outputs from its business services — including ChatGPT Enterprise and its API — are not used to train or improve its models by default. Anthropic similarly states it does not use inputs and outputs from commercial products for model training by default. However, these provider policies do not define how the PULSE deployments will be specifically configured.

⚖️ Governance and Evaluation: Key Questions Remain

The pilots are scheduled to begin in autumn 2026, with resulting playbooks expected to be released in 2027 for use as reference material by other public health agencies.

NIST's AI Risk Management Framework recommends evaluating AI systems according to their intended use, operating environment, affected parties, and potential consequences. It also recommends identifying which AI functions require human oversight and training users to understand system performance and limitations.

Despite this, CHAI has not published separate evaluation, privacy, security, or human-review requirements for the five PULSE use cases. The announcement also does not explain:

• Whether staff must approve generated public communications or verify translations before use
• Whether retrieved clinical information will be validated by staff before operational use
• Whether biosurveillance and drug-wave outputs are for testing only or integrated into live workflows
• Whether incorrect queries or incomplete retrievals will be reviewed before information is acted upon

“Public health teams are being asked to do more with less, and AI can help — as long as it’s brought in with care and the right guardrails.”

— Elizabeth Kelly, Anthropic's Head of Beneficial Deployments

“We believe AI should be useful, safe and accessible to the people tackling society’s most important challenges.”

— Felipe Millon, OpenAI's Head of Government Go-to-Market

🏠 Who Is Eligible to Participate?

Eligible participants under PULSE include:

• ✅ State and territorial health departments
• ✅ County and municipal agencies
• ✅ Tribal authorities and Indian health organisations
• ✅ Large city health departments

CHAI has not specified the minimum staffing, infrastructure, interoperability, or cybersecurity requirements for participating jurisdictions. The announcement also does not explain how playbooks will account for differences in agency size, technical systems, legal responsibilities, staffing, or procurement arrangements.

📄 Broader Context: CHAI's Healthcare AI Governance Work

PULSE forms part of CHAI's broader work on governance standards for healthcare AI. In May, the organisation announced plans to develop guidance covering eight governance areas through workshops and working groups involving more than 150 healthcare AI representatives.

CHAI has also worked with the Joint Commission on governance playbooks aligned with its voluntary Responsible Use of AI in Healthcare certification. The PULSE announcement does not state that participating agencies will be assessed under that certification.

“We know AI is going to reshape how we deliver public health — the question is whether we do it thoughtfully or not.”

— Dr. Ashish Jha, former White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator

Dr. Brian Anderson, Chief Executive of the Coalition for Health AI, noted that public health agencies entered the COVID-19 pandemic after years of limited technology investment. He said PULSE was designed to give agencies practical, hands-on experience with AI before any wider implementation takes place.

🔗 Related: Coalition for Health AI (CHAI)  |  HHS HIPAA Guidance  |  NIST AI Risk Management