President Donald Trump issued an executive order on pediatric cancer using artificial intelligence on Tuesday.
Why is this important?
Trump's Executive Order stated: "Pediatric cancer remains the leading cause of disease-related death for children in the United States aged 1-19 years, and its incidence has increased by more than 40 percent since 1975."
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can drive innovation that could "prevent and treat childhood cancer," the order stated.
Trump outlined a plan at his joint address to the Congress in March to help curb pediatric cancer and said it was one of the most important issues in his administration especially in light of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission.
Trump referenced a 2019 action his Administration took when it created the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative (CCDI).
That initiative is a $50 million federal investment in childhood cancer research in funding every year for 10 years "to address the critical need to collect, generate, and analyze childhood cancer data," the order stated.
"The CCDI is building a foundational data infrastructure, aggregating and generating new data, and using this data to make new discoveries," according to the order. "AI can be used to build upon this data initiative to produce meaningful solutions to pediatric, adolescent, and young adulthood cancer. This application of AI has the potential to transform the Nation's current care and research approach for pediatric cancer -– as well as our healthcare and research infrastructure more broadly –- through use of the rich and multimodal data, secured with appropriate individual privacy protections, to develop early and superior diagnostics, identify cures and optimize treatments, and advance medicine that will save lives."
Trump's order stated, "For too long we have watched our children and their families battle cancer and its long-term chronic effects while healthcare systems often rely on outdated technologies and can be slow to adopt certain innovations. We must prioritize investment in AI-enabled science, build world-class scientific datasets, and empower researchers and clinicians with the tools needed to translate data and AI capabilities into improved care."
The key to the success of the order rests in "harnessing American AI Innovation."
Who is involved?
The MAHA Commission will coordinate with the Secretary of Health and Human Services (Secretary), the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST), and the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto.
Those agencies will work "to develop innovative ways to utilize advanced technologies such as AI to unlock improved diagnoses, treatments, cures, and prevention strategies for pediatric cancer" under America's AI Action Plan.
The executive order's initial focus will identify opportunities to "accelerate the progress of AI-driven solutions at the CCDI, including by making data platforms and tools available as part of the CCDI Data Ecosystem and funding research projects at National Cancer Institute-Designated Cancer Centers that prioritize:
- Improving data infrastructure by consolidating data from multiple sources for AI-ready analysis and utilizing AI to better select participants for clinical trials
- Enhancing data analysis of complex biologic systems with AI tools to radically improve predictive modeling of patient response, disease progression, and treatment toxicity and to turn multi-omics data and imaging data into novel diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic biomarkers
- Improving clinical trial design, access, and outcomes for patients by incorporating multimodal data and using AI approaches to maximize utilization of the information from clinical trials and improve accessibility, recruitment, administration, conduct, and interpretation of clinical trial results
The order also states that the MAHA Commission, in coordination with the Secretary, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Director of the National Institutes of Health, and the APST, "shall prioritize expanding pediatric cancer research and advancements in care by identifying and implementing strategies."
That includes increasing investment from existing federal funds for the CCDI and other federal government initiatives that address pediatric cancer and encouraging the private sector "to make use of the most advanced technologies to unlock cures for pediatric cancer, including those based on AI, to the maximum possible extent."
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will work to ensure that AI innovation is appropriately integrated for electronic health record and claims data to inform private sector and academic research and clinical trial design.
Patients and parents will still control their health information.
How this happened?
A story published in OncoDaily stated:
Stephanie McMahon, former WWE executive and founder of Connor’s Cure—a foundation dedicated to pediatric cancer research—played a key role in advocating for the order.
She emphasized, “If your child was diagnosed with cancer, you wouldn’t care what party their doctor belonged to, you would just want the best—and President Trump is doing just that, enabling that every child with cancer gets the best care possible. We couldn’t be more grateful.”
