| What the experts think
The medical community's comfort with deploying AI in clinical care is rapidly evolving — because it has to, according to health informatics leaders at NYU Langone Health. They said that AI agents will likely be performing clinical tasks completely on their own — with no human in the loop — in the near future. Some areas where this may occur include blood pressure medication titration, nutrition guidance and diabetic retinopathy screening. Reaching the right treatment faster
Dr. Paul Testa, NYU's chief medical information officer, thinks hypertension management is a clear example of where full automation makes sense. Under current care models, getting a patient to their target blood pressure can take six to nine months, largely because of slow, incremental medication adjustments that require repeated interactions with the health system and its human clinicians. But those steps, Dr. Testa said, follow well-established clinical guidelines and rely on objective home blood pressure data — making them well suited for AI-powered decision making. Improving screening rates
Dr. Testa pointed out that there are some clinical workflows that no longer require human interpretation, such as diabetic retinopathy screening. The rate of screening for this disease remains low nationwide, hovering around 15% — but with full automation, Dr. Testa argued that those rates could approach 100%. Screening rates remain low because the process still depends on a series of manual steps — ordering the test, interpreting results and placing referrals — each of which introduces friction and opportunities for delay. Fully automated screening and referral could eliminate those handoffs and ensure eligible patients are identified and routed to care consistently. Filling the workforce gap
Dr. Devin Mann, senior director for informatics innovation at NYU's Center for Healthcare Innovation and Delivery Science, emphasized that this push for full automation isn't just about efficiency or speed — it's about the fact that the workforce to deliver guideline-recommended care simply doesn't exist. Clinical guidelines often call for far more lifestyle counseling and ongoing support than health systems can realistically provide, he noted. In areas like nutrition and chronic disease management, the number of clinicians required would be orders of magnitude higher than the workforce that's actually out there. — By Katie Adams | 
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