Officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs are looking to increase efficiency and optimize their clinicians' professional capabilities, featuring advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. In a November presolicitation, the VA seeks to gauge market readiness for advanced healthcare device manufacturing, ranging from prosthetic solutions, surgical instruments, and personalized digital health assistant technology, as well as artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. "What we are trying to do is utilize AI and machine learning to remove administrative burden of tasks," she told Nextgov. The technology requested by the department will be tailored to areas where a computer can do a better, more efficient job than a human, and thereby give people back time to complete demanding tasks that require human judgement. Some of these areas the AI and machine learning technology could be implemented include surgical preplanning, manufacturing submissions, and 3D printing, along with injection molding to produce plastic medical devices and other equipment.

Services such as Amazon's Alexa could be regulated to allow rival digital assistants to operate on smart speakers and stop the tech giants building a monopoly "in people's kitchens and living rooms", the head of the BBC's radio operation has said. James Purnell, the director of radio and education at the BBC, made the comments weeks after the BBC launched its own voice-activated digital assistant, named Beeb, which offers information such as news, weather and programmes. The BBC is already struggling to keep youth audiences tuning into its TV programming in the Netflix era, and Purnell raised the spectre of the Silicon Valley giants extending that to control of audio access as smart speakers become commonplace. "We now have smart speakers in so many homes, and they are going to be in far more homes," he said, speaking to MPs on the digital, media, culture and sport select committee. "There is a question about whether we are happy about the biggest organisations in the world, big tech companies with their executives essentially [based] in the [United] States, combining a monopoly in people's kitchens and in living rooms. "I do think it is worth thinking about whether there should be some regulation of those smart speakers so there is a choice of assistance for people.