Securing the Rise of Agentic AI in Healthcare

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping healthcare delivery. From clinical documentation and patient triage to prescription management and care coordination, AI-powered tools hold enormous promise to reduce administrative burden, expand access to care, and improve outcomes.

At a time when health systems face persistent staffing shortages and rising demand, these innovations are not just exciting — they are essential.

That’s why Imprivata is working to extend our trusted healthcare access management platform to develop a control plane for AI agents that is purpose-built with the necessary security, privacy, and workflow standards that meet healthcare’s unique and complex requirements.

We believe strongly in the transformative potential of AI. We also believe that security and privacy cannot simply be bolted on after deployment. They must be foundational.

Some recent analysis from Mindgard underscores this reality – emerging AI-driven clinical workflows can be vulnerable to manipulation if security and guardrails are not embedded from the start. With some clever prompt-injection techniques, the clinical AI tool Doctronic was compromised to spread conspiracy theories, over prescribe oxycontin, and even provide instructions for how to create methamphetamine.

In healthcare, where patient safety and privacy are directly at stake, AI agents must be properly governed. Otherwise, there could be significant operational, financial, and clinical impact. For instance:

• Patient harm from corrupted clinical information: An AI agent that can modify charts, summaries, or workflows — if manipulated or drifting — could introduce incorrect meds, allergies, diagnoses, or triage decisions that can cause real harm, especially at scale.
• Operational paralysis that mimics a ransomware attack: Runaway automation, bulk mis-scoped actions, or retry loops can disrupt scheduling, pharmacy, lab, ADT workflows, and more, effectively creating downtime but without a cyberattack.
• Financial fraud & PHI exposure: With access to clinical and revenue systems, an AI agent could enable improper claims activity, payment diversion, or large-scale PHI leakage, triggering significant regulatory, financial, and reputational damage.

In an era of agentic AI — where systems can take actions, generate clinical summaries, or influence care decisions — securing access and ensuring observability are paramount. Healthcare organizations must apply zero trust principles to AI just as they do to human users: never assume trust, always verify identity, and continuously validate authorization.

That means implementing strong identity security and role-based privileged access controls to ensure AI systems can only access the data and functions appropriate to their purpose. It means enforcing least-privilege policies so that both human and AI agents operate within tightly defined boundaries. And it means embedding human-in-the-loop safeguards where clinical judgment or patient safety could be impacted, ensuring that AI augments — not replaces — responsible decision-making.

Imprivata is helping organizations accelerate AI adoption securely with a control plane that applies role-based access principles, enforces approval and consent policies, monitors for risky behavior in real time, and maintains a comprehensive audit trail of all agent activity. This will help teams:

1. Discover and inventory agents (you can’t govern what you can’t see)
2. Bind ownership and accountability (every agent needs a human sponsor and purpose)
3. Require delegation and explicit consent for acting on behalf of humans
4. Enforce policy at action-time, not just at login
5. Detect threats and automate response (throttle, step-up, quarantine, revoke)
6. Produce end-to-end audit evidence (approvals → tool calls → data touched → actions)

We are committed to enabling our customers to adopt AI as quickly as their clinical and operational goals demand — without compromising on security, compliance, or patient trust.

AI will undoubtedly improve the efficiency and accessibility of healthcare. But its success will depend on whether we build it responsibly. Security is not a brake on innovation; it is the foundation that allows innovation to scale safely.

Healthcare has always depended on trust — between patients and providers, between clinicians and systems. As AI becomes part of that ecosystem, safeguarding that trust is not optional. It is essential.

We look forward to hearing about your organization’s vision for AI agents – what is the strategy, how are you thinking about governance and security, what keeps you up at night. Let’s continue the conversation with you at an upcoming Imprivata Connect event. Check out the schedule and register at https://www.imprivata.com/connect.