Joint Commission and the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) released a document meant to ensure U.S. health systems safely and responsibly implement artificial intelligence (AI) at scale. The Guidance on Responsible Use of AI in Healthcare represents the first of many milestones to result from the two groups’ strategic partnership, launched June 2025.

“We understand how quickly AI is changing healthcare—and at a scale I’ve never seen in my time as a leader,” Joint Commission President/CEO Dr. Jonathan Perlin stated. “From the moment we announced our partnership with CHAI, we knew we wanted our partnership to reflect that fast-paced dynamic, while still delivering a thoughtful and streamlined guidance for healthcare organizations to self-govern with AI.”

The guidance features high-level recommendations for responsibly using AI and is designed to be accessible, applicable, and adaptable for healthcare organizations at any stage of their AI journey. Specifically, it establishes that policies, appropriate local validation, monitoring, and use, to be flexibly interpreted and integrated into existing or new processes as deemed appropriate for the context of any organization. This guidance is meant to provide transparency into the Joint Commission-CHAI process, and community feedback on this guidance will be incorporated into future outputs.

“The need is immediate, and we are eager to respond,” CHAI CEO Dr. Brian Anderson commented. “This guidance and all subsequent playbooks are about keeping pace with the evolving field, not just by defining responsible AI, but by making it usable in hospitals and health systems across the country—no matter their resource level.”

A series of products are slated to launch later this year and into 2026. The next release will be governance playbooks, after a series of workshops are conducted to ensure hospitals and health systems of all sizes and regions are contributing to its development. These playbooks will be built on the original guidance, incorporating the feedback received from the community, and providing more practical and applied details. Following that, Joint Commission will develop a voluntary AI certification based on the final set of playbooks and open it to its more than 22,000 accredited and certified healthcare organizations nationwide.

Joint Commission’s evidence-based standards, reach, and scale, combined with CHAI’s technical expertise and broad-based network, provides the unique ability to guide health systems in effectively utilizing AI to improve patient outcomes. Further, the ongoing partnership will foster increased innovation within expert and field-driven guidelines and guardrails, more productivity and reduced administrative burden on providers, and overall better health outcomes.

Joint Commission enables and affirms the highest healthcare quality and patient safety standards. Founded in 1951, it is the nation’s oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting body in healthcare, evaluating more than 23,000 U.S. healthcare organizations and programs. As an independent, nonprofit organization, Joint Commission inspires healthcare organizations across all settings to excel in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value.

The CHAI (Coalition for Health AI) mission is to be the trusted source of guidelines for responsible AI in health. It aims to ensure high-quality care, foster trust among users, and meet growing healthcare needs. CHAI membership is open and rapidly expanding with nearly 3,000 organizations including health systems, patient advocacy groups, and a wide range of industry leaders and startups in the healthcare and technology ecosystems. CHAI is committed to convening and dialogue to achieve consensus.