{"id":10017,"date":"2026-04-06T17:47:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/startup-ai-system-prescribe-psychiatric-medication\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T17:47:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:47:12","slug":"startup-ai-system-prescribe-psychiatric-medication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/startup-ai-system-prescribe-psychiatric-medication\/","title":{"rendered":"Startup Approved to Let AI System Prescribe Psychiatric Medication"},"content":{"rendered":"
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You\u2019ve probably heard of AI psychosis<\/a>. Well, now get ready for AI psychiatrists \u2014 with prescription pads.<\/p>\n

A San Francisco startup called Legion Health has been approved to let its AI app prescribe psychiatric medications to patients in Utah<\/p>\n

As The Verge<\/em> reports<\/a>, there are efforts to keep the idea from becoming the disaster that it sounds like. The chatbot can only renew prescriptions for a specific set of medications, including fluoxetine (Prozac), sertraline (Zoloft), and other substances used to treat anxiety and depression. It can only prescribe drugs that were previously prescribed by a human psychiatrist, and patients will also need to be stable and not have been hospitalized for a psychiatric condition in the last year.<\/p>\n

Despite those considerable carve-outs, experts are warning the system may do little to improve access to those who need care the most \u2014 while cracking the door to an ominous era for medicine.<\/p>\n

University of Utah School of Medicine psychiatrist Brent Kious told The Verge<\/em> that automating the process could contribute to an \u201cepidemic of over-treatment\u201d in psychiatry. The medications should \u201crequire more active management, changes, and careful consideration,\u201d as Harvard Medical School director of digital psychiatry John Torous added.<\/p>\n

The experts also cautioned that the chatbots may gloss over important details or not realize that a patient was answering questions inaccurately on purpose to speed up care. Human clinicians still have the advantage of being able to read between the lines and realize when patients are being misleading or intentionally obtuse.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be better if there were greater transparency, more science, and more rigorous testing before people are asked to use this,\u201d Kious told The Verge<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The rollout of Legion Health\u2019s tool is Utah\u2019s second foray into automating healthcare using AI chatbots. An initial pilot of a model in December, dubbed Doctronic<\/a>, turned out to be a major point of contention, with cybersecurity researchers finding<\/a> that it could be easily coaxed into spreading conspiracy theories about vaccines, recommending meth as a treatment for social withdrawal, and tripling a patient\u2019s suggested dosage of Oxycontin.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Legion Health claims it\u2019s playing it safe with its latest AI chatbot, agreeing to file monthly reports to Utah regulators and physicians for review. The company also says it will closely involve pharmacists in the renewal of prescriptions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see this as critical to expand access to hundreds of thousands of people in Utah who live in mental health shortage areas, as well as an important proving ground for AI in medicine,\u201d Legion cofounder and president Arthur MacWaters told\u00a0The Verge<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The company is hoping to roll out its refill chatbot \u201cnationwide\u201d before the end of this year.<\/p>\n

Torous, however, advised patients to stay away and continue seeking the advice of a human clinician instead.<\/p>\n

More on healthcare chatbots:<\/strong> Therapists Go on Strike, Saying They\u2019re Being Replaced by AI<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The post Startup Approved to Let AI System Prescribe Psychiatric Medication<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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You\u2019ve probably heard of AI psychosis. Well, now get ready for AI psychiatrists \u2014 with prescription pads. A San Francisco startup called Legion Health has been approved to let its…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,3449,3841,3844,466],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-brain","category-ethics","category-health-medicine","category-mental-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}