RegulatingAI Podcast: Sanjay Puri Talks Healthcare, Governance & Biosecurity with Francisco Sagasti & Dr. Ashish Jha

On the RegulatingAI Podcast, Sanjay Puri hosts Francisco Sagasti and Dr. Ashish Jha on AI healthcare, regulation, inequality, and biosecurity risks.

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES, June 19, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Artificial intelligence is poised to transform healthcare worldwide, but without new governance frameworks, transparency standards, and safeguards against biological threats, the technology could deepen inequalities and create unprecedented risks. Those were among the key messages delivered by former Peruvian President Francisco Sagasti and public health expert Dr. Ashish Jha during a special episode of the RegulatingAI Podcast, hosted by Sanjay Puri in partnership with the Club de Madrid. The discussion brought together two prominent voices at the intersection of technology, public policy, and healthcare. Sagasti, a former president of Peru and longtime science and technology policymaker, joined Dr. Jha, a former White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator and current CEO of BioRadar, to examine how governments can manage the rapid integration of AI into medicine.

A central theme of the conversation was whether existing regulatory systems are capable of overseeing AI-powered healthcare tools. Jha argued that agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration were designed to evaluate static products, not continuously evolving AI systems. “The FDA was designed to evaluate a product at a particular moment in time,” Jha said, noting that AI models constantly update and improve. He called for a new regulatory framework focused on transparency, testing for bias, real-world monitoring, and post-market surveillance. Sagasti echoed the need for caution, emphasizing that AI should remain a tool rather than a replacement for human judgment. He warned against relying solely on AI for medical diagnoses, citing risks associated with hallucinations, incomplete datasets, and regional differences in health conditions.

“Computers, artificial intelligence, and the internet can provide rational tools, but they depend on the quality of the evidence and data fed into them,” Sagasti said. He stressed the importance of balancing technology with human values, ethics, and professional expertise. The debate also explored concerns about market concentration in AI development. Sagasti warned that a handful of technology companies increasingly control the infrastructure, data, and capital required to develop advanced AI systems. He argued that outdated intellectual property rules have contributed to monopolistic behavior and called for reforms to prevent excessive concentration of power. Jha agreed, suggesting that democratic societies are unlikely to tolerate a future in which only a few corporations control the most powerful AI systems.

“There is going to be political backlash if two, three, or four companies essentially control all of artificial intelligence,” he said. Despite those concerns, both speakers highlighted AI’s potential to reduce healthcare disparities, particularly in underserved regions. Drawing on his personal experience growing up in rural Bihar, India, Jha argued that AI-assisted community health workers could significantly improve access to medical expertise. “The knowledge gap between a physician at a leading medical school and a frontline clinician in rural Bihar is massive,” Jha said. “AI can absolutely flatten that knowledge gap.” Sagasti agreed that AI could expand access to care but stressed that systems should ideally be trained on local data to ensure culturally and medically relevant recommendations.

The discussion also addressed accountability for consumer-facing AI health tools, including chatbots and virtual health assistants. Jha acknowledged that current liability frameworks remain inadequate and proposed a balanced approach that rewards companies following best practices while holding negligent developers accountable. The conversation took a more urgent turn when addressing the intersection of AI and synthetic biology. Jha described AI-enabled biological weapons as one of the most serious and underappreciated threats facing the world today. “The threat of engineered biological weapons has totally changed in the last five years,” he said. According to Jha, advances in gene editing, synthetic biology, and AI are making it easier for both state and non-state actors to develop dangerous pathogens.

Rather than focusing solely on preventing such technologies from emerging, Jha argued that governments should prioritize rapid detection systems, vaccine development platforms, and biological defense capabilities. Through BioRadar, he is working to create an AI-powered early warning system capable of detecting both natural outbreaks and engineered biological threats. As the episode concluded, host Sanjay Puri described the discussion as a roadmap for policymakers navigating AI’s expanding role in healthcare. While both guests acknowledged the immense promise of AI-driven medicine, they agreed that success will depend on governance systems that balance innovation, accountability, equity, and security in an increasingly complex technological landscape.

Upasana Das
Knowledge Networks
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