Would you trust AI to renew your drug prescriptions?

STAT News · Feb 20, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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By Alex HoganFeb. 20, 2026 Senior Multimedia Producer Biotech investor Robert Nelsen made a bold prediction at a live recording of STAT’s “Readout LOUD” podcast last month in San Francisco — that artificial intelligence will replace doctors. In fact, he thinks that AI is already better than “most of [his] doctors.” Nelsen’s comments were quite controversial on social media, but he stood by his forecast on X. So what tasks typically performed by doctors might be delegated to AI? A startup called Doctronic thinks AI is ready to renew prescriptions, for one. And Utah is allowing the company’s chatbot to do just that by waiving some of the state’s regulations on the practice of medicine. In this week’s STATus Report, host Alex Hogan chats with STAT health tech reporter Mario Aguilar about how this chatbot works, the controversial regulatory argument for why Doctronic’s “AI Doctor” is outside the Food and Drug Administration’s purview, why this is all alarming some medical experts, and more.