The EU AI Act’s Impacts on Digital Health: Regulatory Challenges and Future Directions for Medical and Healthcare Innovation

The European Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) has profound implications for technological innovation in the medical and health care sector, transcending the boundaries of existing legal frameworks such as the Medical Device Regulation (MDR) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This paper examines basic regulatory choices of the AI Act relevant for the field of digital health innovations by contextualizing its main goals, key obligations, and addressed actors. In light of these considerations, we present a scoping literature review that identifies potential regulatory challenges for stakeholders engaged in research, innovation and healthcare. Building on this, we point to concepts and methodologies to overcome such challenges in a way fostering innovation while realizing key constitutional and societal interests at the same time.