Utah has become the first US state to let artificial intelligence issue first-time prescriptions. The pilot covers acne drugs for adults.

Nolla Health launched the programme on Oct. 5 under a 12-month agreement with Utah’s Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy and the Division of Professional Licensing. It is the first American authorisation for AI to write initial prescriptions, not just refills.

Patients use the Nolla Derm app to scan their face and fill in a medical history. The AI rates acne severity and picks a treatment from eight approved topical creams. It cannot prescribe oral drugs or isotretinoin, known as Accutane.

Oversight is staged. A doctor will review every prescription for the first 100 patients. The next 400 get retrospective weekly review. After that, doctors will sample 10% of prescriptions each month.

Nolla says its model was trained on more than 100,000 acne cases and agreed with clinicians about 96% of the time.

Doctors’ groups had criticised Utah’s earlier AI health pilots. The state says each stage needs written approval before review is reduced.