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The health secretary says federal officials already use linked records for research. His call to open more data to outside researchers did not come with new access rules.
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At the September 28 MAHA Open Data Summit, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called for linking medical, insurance, and lifestyle records so AI can help researchers study chronic disease, and said the administration wants data prepared for hundreds of outside researchers. He described ongoing federal analyses but announced no new access pathway, eligibility standards, or privacy rules. The policy question is therefore not just whether AI can analyze larger datasets, but who may inspect them and under what safeguards; the plan remains an ambition, not an implemented program.
Kennedy cited Medicare and Medicaid claims, medical interventions, and possible exposures; he said differing state data formats make CDC datasets difficult to combine.
He said CDC researchers use the Vaccine Safety Datalink to compare outcomes among vaccinated and unvaccinated people, but presented no study results.
Kennedy claimed some analyses that once took years could run in seconds, without offering a completed study or methodology to substantiate the comparison.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to connect more Americans’ medical and lifestyle data so government officials and outside researchers can analyze it with AI. At a September 28 summit, he described work he said is already under way—and a goal of opening data to hundreds of external researchers. He did not announce new rules granting that access.
The MAHA Institute billed the Washington, D.C., gathering as a discussion of “Building A Health Data Architecture for America.” Kennedy argued that medical records and information about exercise, food, chemicals and other exposures should be easier to connect. He wants researchers to use those records to investigate possible contributors to chronic disease, including questions about vaccines and health outcomes. That is a proposed use of the data, not a finding that any such link exists.
Kennedy pointed to Medicaid claims, information about medical interventions and possible exposures as data the administration is tracking. He also cited Medicare records and systems that can link insurance claims with electronic health records. State datasets reported to the CDC can be difficult to use together because they collect different information, he said. Connecting records across those systems is the practical challenge behind his appeal for more comprehensive research data.
Federal officials are already using AI to look for patterns in health histories, according to Kennedy. He said CDC officials are using the Vaccine Safety Datalink to compare outcomes among vaccinated and unvaccinated people. He also described studies drawing on Medicaid and linked records to examine vaccination during pregnancy and later childhood outcomes. These were descriptions of research activity, not results from those studies.
Kennedy cast AI as a way to ask questions across millions of records much faster than researchers could examine them individually. He claimed some studies that once took years could now be done “literally in seconds.” The speed claim was his assessment; the summit remarks did not provide a completed study or a method for evaluating that comparison.
A qualified researcher with a legitimate hypothesis should not need permission from a gatekeeper to test it.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaking about access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink
The Vaccine Safety Datalink is held by healthcare organizations with safeguards for health privacy. Kennedy criticized limits on access to it and said the administration wants to make health data “research ready” for hundreds of outside researchers. Those are different questions: how useful linked records might be for research, and who should be allowed to examine them. His remarks did not set out new eligibility or privacy rules for that wider access.
The choice of venue gives that access question an edge. The Guardian reports that MAHA Institute president Mark Gorton has attacked vaccines at another event. At the summit, he said outside organizations could help fill research gaps and apply political pressure. That makes it especially important to distinguish a dataset available for legitimate inquiry from an open invitation to draw unsupported conclusions from patterns found by AI.
The AI research goal predates this summit. In July, HHS said it would contribute scientific resources to the Genesis Mission, a federal effort to apply AI to biomedical research. Kennedy’s September remarks went further in describing the outside access he wants for linked health records. Whether that ambition becomes a defined access process—and what protections it would require—remains unresolved.
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