As artificial intelligence adoption accelerates across healthcare, industry experts are raising concerns about the growing risks associated with AI governance, data security, patient safety, and operational resilience.
To help healthcare organizations address these challenges, the Health Sector Coordinating Council (HSCC) has released an 87-page Health Industry AI Cyber Governance Framework Implementation Guide. The new playbook is designed to help security leaders identify, manage, and govern AI-related risks across healthcare environments.
The guide highlights several potential risks linked to AI systems, including the exposure of sensitive patient information through public chatbots, manipulated medical imaging data, inaccurate diagnoses generated by large language models, and incorrect drug recommendations that could impact patient safety.
According to the framework, AI governance in healthcare requires a higher level of oversight than many other industries due to the critical nature of medical decisions and the complex regulatory environment surrounding patient care.
The playbook covers governance requirements for a wide range of AI technologies, including traditional machine learning systems, non-agentic models, generative AI tools, and emerging agentic AI systems capable of autonomous actions. It states that each category introduces unique cyber risks that require dedicated governance controls.
The framework recommends treating AI as an enterprise technology risk, similar to electronic health records, medical devices, cloud platforms, and third-party vendors, while implementing additional safeguards for AI-specific threats. These include AI hallucinations, prompt injection attacks, model drift, output variability, data poisoning, protected health information leaks, and adversarial attacks.
The guide also emphasizes that cybersecurity for AI tools is a shared responsibility between healthcare providers, technology vendors, and device manufacturers. It calls for stronger coordination among departments responsible for different technologies to ensure comprehensive risk management.
Additional topics covered include AI supply chain risks, operational resilience for AI-dependent clinical workflows, non-human identity management, patient transparency requirements, liability and insurance considerations, and governance standards for research-based AI applications.
The new framework is part of a broader series of AI-focused guidance documents being developed by HSCC. The organization, which includes more than 500 healthcare infrastructure stakeholders, continues to work with public and private sector partners to address emerging threats and vulnerabilities affecting healthcare services.
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