# Utah enters the Wild West of AI healthcare. How far will it go? > Source: > Published: 2026-10-06 00:35:30+00:00 - Intermountain Health and four other companies got approval to use AI for patient care. - Around 3-in-10 Americans already consult AI for healthcare concerns on a monthly basis. - Companies released Utah-only app features allowing prescription renewals without delays. The state of Utah expanded its first-in-the-nation pilot program for artificial intelligence to include some of largest healthcare providers in the American West, giving Utah patients exclusive access to clinical AI applications. In partnership with Utah’s Office of Artificial Intelligence, five companies, including Intermountain Health and University of Utah Health, were approved to use AI in settings that typically require a license from the state. A temporary exception to state regulations will enable partnered firms to provide prescription renewals for chronic illness, visual evaluations for acne medication and initial physical therapy recommendations all through AI. Each use case must disclose AI is running the process. The promise of AI is immense, Intermountain Health CEO Rob Allen told the Deseret News. It has the potential to empower doctors to analyze patient data more effectively and to deliver more attentive — and affordable — care. Utah’s AI “sandbox” is not meant to turn hospitals into a high-risk experiment, according to Allen. By letting companies use AI under the eye of third-party evaluators, he said it will help providers be better at their jobs. “That’s what the sandbox allows, a very structured approach to assure before we deploy those tools that they will work effectively and keep patients safe,” Allen told the Deseret News. “Which is what we’ve always focused on.” Such a policy shift thrusts the Beehive State to the frontier of AI implementation, turning doctors’ offices into a real-time test of the benefits and drawbacks of the revolutionary technology as the rest of the nation watches. ### ‘A little jealous’ of Utah On Monday, leaders in healthcare innovation joined Utah officials at the state Capitol Building to announce what they described as a groundbreaking model to be replicated in states around the country and in Washington, D.C. Dr. Nirav Shah, a senior scholar at the Stanford University School of Medicine, heralded Utah’s AI legislative laboratory as the envy of the nation since [around 3-in-10](https://www.kff.org/public-opinion/kff-tracking-poll-on-health-information-and-trust-use-of-social-media-and-ai-for-health-information-and-advice/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) Americans already consult AI for healthcare concerns. Despite his work in Silicon Valley, Shah said he is “more than a little jealous” of what Utah is doing. This sentiment was repeated by several speakers on Monday from around the country and the world, including one based in India. While there is growing concern among the public about AI, there is not currently a pathway at the federal or state levels for the industry to carefully work with regulators on how to rollout new products, Shah told the Deseret News. “This is the only state where a company can say, ‘This is how we’re going to do it safely, responsibly and use this framework to see if it actually works,’” he said. “Once we’ve proven it in Utah, then we can prove it everywhere.” Changes to customer experience in Utah will be immediate. Nolla Health, an AI-powered dermatology startup, unveiled a Utah-only version of their app on Monday that lets users in the state navigate the product website without having to wait for a team of clinicians on the back end to respond. August, an AI chatbot that quickly connects users with licensed doctors, also released a capability just for Utah users that allows them to automatically get prescription refills for routine, non-controlled medications for free. ### Is Utah an AI Guinea pig? Central to Utah’s new program is a new network of six independent AI evaluators who will be tasked with evaluating the evidence produced by partnered firms to determine if their clinical pilots are safe and effective. As one of the third-party evaluators, Mark Sendak, CEO of VegaHealth, said their involvement will help hold parties accountable so that the state’s AI sandbox is used as intended to provide helpful feedback for legislation. But the results of the pilots will impact everywhere. “Clinical tools are higher stakes and they need stronger evidence to earn the trust of health systems and patients,” Sendak said. “Utah’s sandbox is one of the first places where that evidence is going to be generated.” In 2023, Utah became the first state to create an office of AI policy with authority to draft liability mitigation agreements with AI firms. After a pilot period, the office then proposes regulations based on industry feedback. This process led to new laws in 2025, establishing rules for the use of mental health chatbots, broadening prohibitions on AI abuse of personal identity and codifying AI disclosure requirements for certain businesses. The new healthcare initiative will focus on how the law should treat legal liability for doctors that participate in a medical process that involves AI, according to Utah Department of Commerce Director Margaret Woolley Busse. When it comes to where Utah will draw the line on clinical AI applications, it is still clearly the Wild West. “I don’t think that we know that answer yet because the capabilities of AI are changing rapidly,” Woolley Busse said. “I do know that we always want to have a human involved somewhere. And that’s just really, really important.”