Few AI device manufacturers disclose payments to physicians

Katie Palmer covers telehealth, clinical artificial intelligence, and the health data economy — with an emphasis on the impacts of digital health care for patients, providers, and businesses. You can reach Katie on Signal at palmer.01.

Artificial intelligence has danced around the fringes of prostate cancer for years, but in 2024, it got a profile-raising boost: an AI tool that could use biopsy images and clinical data to predict therapy benefits and a patient’s prognosis was recommended in a set of widely used guidelines for oncology care.

“I remember being so impressed,” said David-Dan Nguyen, a urology resident at the University of Toronto who focuses on prostate cancer. But he was also curious: How exactly does a new device make it into clinical standards? He started to look into whether its manufacturer had made any payments to hospitals or doctors in the leadup to its guideline inclusion — to support research, perhaps, or to cover fees for consulting or marketing. 

When he looked at Open Payments, the federal database of industry payments to clinicians and teaching hospitals, he didn’t see any. “That really started sparking a thought in the back of my mind,” said Nguyen, who decided to keep looking for payments made by manufacturers of AI devices authorized by the Food and Drug Administration. In a research letter published Monday in JAMA, he and his co-authors found fewer than 10% of nearly 850 AI devices were linked to payments between 2017 and 2023.