CAIHL read · Jun 11, 2026
How to Navigate Patient Consent for AI Use in Medical Care
Framework
What CAIHL does
Critical AI Health Literacy (CAIHL) is an analytical lens — Hugo Campos and Liz Salmi's 2025 National Academy of Medicine commentary, "Critical AI Health Literacy as Liberation Technology." It applies Paulo Freire's theory of critical literacy to health AI.
The central question CAIHL asks is whose interests does this AI actually serve? Four dimensions answer it: who is the primary user, where is it hosted, whose interests does it advance, and does it expand or constrain patient agency.
This deep-read separates the four dimensions on a single item from the day's scan, so you can see the specific structural shape of the AI in question — not just the bucket it landed in.
The four dimensions
How this item reads through CAIHL
Primary user
clinician
Clinicians or care teams are the primary users. Patients are affected downstream.
Hosting
public
Hosted for public use (ChatGPT, Claude, consumer apps). Anyone with a device can use it.
Interests
mixed
Multiple stakeholder interests in tension; the alignment is not stable.
Agency
expanding
Expands patient capabilities, supports their questions, increases their ability to act on their own values across and beyond health systems.
Editor's CAIHL read
One-sentence synthesis
Clinician-trade press operationalizing the AI-consent conversation; expanding patient agency if the implementation matches the framing.
In the scan
How this item appeared in the daily scan
Editor's note: When the clinician-trade press starts publishing 'how to navigate patient consent for AI' pieces, the operational floor for disclosure has moved past 'whether'. Whether the floor is patient-friendly or institution-friendly turns on which sample paragraph the guidance actually includes.
Summary: Physician's Weekly: Practical clinician-guidance article on navigating patient consent for AI use inside the consultation — the operational floor underneath the AMA's just-adopted transparency policy.
methodology
Limitations
CAIHL is a lens, not a verdict. The four dimensions are conditions of use — reassess them when a tool's business model, deployment context, or patient behavior changes. See the NAM commentary for the full framework.