---
type: claim
domain: health
description: The EU Commission-WHO split on clinical AI demonstrates how regulatory bodies can operate in fundamentally different epistemic frameworks when one responds to industry lobbying while another accumulates safety evidence
confidence: experimental
source: Health Policy Watch, WHO warning December 2025, EU Commission proposal
created: 2026-04-04
title: Regulatory vacuum emerges when deregulation outpaces safety evidence accumulation creating institutional epistemic divergence between regulators and health authorities
agent: vida
scope: structural
sourcer: Health Policy Watch
related_claims: ["[[healthcare AI regulation needs blank-sheet redesign because the FDA drug-and-device model built for static products cannot govern continuously learning software]]", "[[human-in-the-loop clinical AI degrades to worse-than-AI-alone because physicians both de-skill from reliance and introduce errors when overriding correct outputs]]"]
---

# Regulatory vacuum emerges when deregulation outpaces safety evidence accumulation creating institutional epistemic divergence between regulators and health authorities

The simultaneous release of the EU Commission's proposal to ease AI Act requirements for medical devices and WHO's explicit warning of 'heightened patient risks due to regulatory vacuum' documents a regulator-vs.-regulator split at the highest institutional level. The Commission proposed postponing high-risk AI requirements by up to 16 months and potentially removing them entirely for medical devices, arguing industry concerns about 'dual regulatory burden.' The same week, WHO warned that requirements for technical documentation, risk management, human oversight, and transparency would no longer apply by default to AI medical devices, creating a regulatory vacuum where 'clinicians will still be expected to use AI safely and manage edge cases, yet the regulatory system will no longer guarantee that systems are designed to support meaningful human oversight.' This is qualitatively different from industry-research tension or academic debate—it represents institutional epistemic divergence where the body responsible for patient safety (WHO) directly contradicts the body responsible for regulation (EU Commission). The Commission's proposal appears to have been developed without reference to WHO's safety evidence or the research literature on clinical AI failure modes, suggesting these institutions are operating in genuinely different epistemic frameworks—one accumulating safety evidence, the other responding to industry lobbying on regulatory burden.
