Response to the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence

This submission to the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence sets out Research Australia’s position on the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in health and medical research and health care, drawing on member consultation and earlier RA work. It maintains that the main question is no longer whether AI will be adopted but whether Australia has the systems to adopt it safely, effectively and equitably, citing the Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare’s 2026 national policy roadmap. It makes eight recommendations: a whole-of-sector national healthcare AI plan; a unified national AI and health data strategy with secure access, interoperability and Australian data sovereignty; beacon implementations in areas such as aged care, primary care, childhood cancer, rare disease and regional, rural, remote and very remote (RRRvR) health; proportionate, adaptive regulation and clinical governance with post-market monitoring; workforce capability in AI, data science, health economics and regulation; public trust and social licence through participatory governance and consent reform; use of procurement and commercialisation policy to retain intellectual property, data value and sovereign capability; and equity by design, including Indigenous Data Sovereignty under Priority Reform 4 of the Closing the Gap National Agreement. It warns of risks from rapid, unregulated uptake of generative AI tools such as clinical scribes and from overseas models that do not reflect Australian evidence. It also recommends investment in trusted research environments and sovereign compute, an Australian equivalent of the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, and alignment with the draft National Health and Medical Research Strategy 2026–2036.