ALFA at 1600: Health Tech, AI, and What Comes Next

On Wednesday afternoon, we waited outside the North Gate of the White House for an escort to take us to the President’s Making Health Tech Great Again event. It was ALFA’s first visit to the White House as a credentialed member of the media.

As we waited in the Brady Briefing Room to be moved to the East Room where the event would be held, one of the things we kept thinking about was “how many members of the media here are actually interested in the subject matter of the event?” Judging by post-event coverage: not too many.

We get it. The White House beat is sprawling, and reporters often hand off policy events like this to colleagues with subject-matter depth. But here’s the problem: sometimes no one picks it up. And health tech–arguably the most promising and least understood policy frontier–is too important to be sidelined. That’s why ALFA wanted to be at this event. And we are grateful for the Comms team’s hospitality for making it happen.

With that, let’s jump into the substance of the day.

Making Health Tech Great Again

Ahead of the public event, HHS and CMS announced new commitments from top health and tech firms to make your medical history portable—digitally, securely, and across providers. Right now, that stack of paper you hand-carry between appointments? That’s our system. And it isn’t just an inconvenience, it hinders our health.

Acting DOGE Director Amy Gleason shared a touching personal story on the topic. Her daughter lives with a rare disease, and for years, they carried a binder full of paper records from doctor to doctor. She believes that if even one provider had access to her daughter’s full history, a diagnosis could’ve come faster.

“While my daughter’s disease is rare,” Gleason said, “our experience is far too common.”

Interoperable health data will better inform doctors and patients alike, and see diagnoses, treatments, and overall health outcomes improve. And yes, the foundation of that future is technology.

AI’s Detection Power

White House AI czar David Sacks also shared a striking text message from a friend whose wife was living with chronic illness for close to ten years. The friend recently submitted his wife’s bloodwork into a leading LLM and the model flagged a rare genetic defect that caused bone marrow failure. Everything tracked: symptoms, age of presentation, and the fact that it affects ten in one million people—making it reasonable that doctors had not identified it yet.

This is what AI in health should look like. Augmentation, not replacement.

In announcing the commitment from health and tech companies, CMS Director Mehmet Oz summed up the moment clearly: “For too long, patients in this country have been burdened with a healthcare system that has not kept pace with the disruptive innovations that have transformed nearly every other sector of our economy…we stand ready for a paradigm shift in the U.S. healthcare system for the benefit of patients and providers.”

A Question We Didn’t Get To Ask

The word we keep coming back to in describing this effort—and the broader MAHA movement —is “agency”. Giving Americans more control over their health information is the crux of a healthier life.

Which is why our piece from last week on the regulatory burdens faced by wearable fitness tracker WHOOP is so important. New technologies and new tools are only as good as the availability to use them. And while the leadership of these agencies is making great strides in breaking down barriers to entry, regulators at some of these agencies appear to still be operating under outdated constructs.

Questions weren’t taken from the attending media. But if called on, this is what we were ready with:

“Mr. Secretary — the Administration has taken significant steps to give more agency over how Americans interact with their health data. 

Part of that includes Americans being able to measure their health metrics on a real time basis–something that new tools such as wearable technology is able to provide. 

But it seems the FDA is still evaluating these new tools under old pretenses–labeling them as “medical devices” which makes it a lot harder for new companies to thrive. 

For instance the agency sent a warning letter to one company that was offering blood pressure–which is obviously a valuable metric. 

Is it your intention that these new tools will only be available as approved medical devices? Or are there steps underway to free up these regulatory hurdles so more Americans can have better insight into their health status?”

To truly realize the impact of technology on our health, it needs to be the latter. And given the outspoken priorities from Secretary Kennedy–including a goal to have a wearable on every American that wants one–we are hopeful that’s going to happen. Until then, ALFA will stay on this beat.

AI Building Boom

Thanks to those who joined us for Wednesday morning’s event with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. This event series keeps getting better and we couldn’t be prouder to partner with Breitbart News and CGCN on them.

At the conversation, Secretary Bessent commented on the current “cap ex boom” saying, “I didn’t realize what a decision the U.S. had made to de-industrialize.” 

“Through a lot of the overreach in the environmental laws, we were no longer able to build things,” Bessent added. “And, President Trump, and we in the cabinet, are committed to making sure that America is able to build again. It should not take eight years to get a pipeline approved.”

So far, it’s working. The WSJ recently reported that spending on AI infrastructure has already exceeded spending on telecom and internet infrastructure from the dot-com boom. The Journal also notes that this “spending on IT infrastructure is so big that it’s acting as a sort of private-sector stimulus program.”

Beyond these top-line numbers (which admittedly are so big they are hard to comprehend) stay tuned to ALFA for a significant report on the economic and jobs impact on these investments. 

See You In Two

We’re off next week for summer break. Stay hydrated, stay curious, and we’ll see you when we’re back. Thanks for reading and have a great week.

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