Patient Safety in the Era of AI: Draft Conditions for the Design of Safe Care (National Academy of Medicine, 13 July 2026)

Summary

Digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping the capabilities, expectations, and responsibilities of patients and clinicians. AI offers an opportunity to transform health care writ large by enabling care that is inherently safe, highly personalised to each individual, and continuously monitored and adapted to change. AI also offers novel capabilities to address historic barriers to patient safety.

This article introduces the draft essential system conditions for safe care, describing approaches to the highest-leverage priority actions, and posits a roadmap toward AI-enabled care that is not only of unprecedented safety, but also establishes the foundation for care of unprecedented effectiveness. This commentary was developed under the auspices of the National Academy of Medicine’s Steering Group on Patient Safety in the Era of AI.