An executive order directs the Make America Healthy Again Commission and other federal officials to pursue artificial intelligence for pediatric cancer diagnosis, treatment, cures, and prevention. Executive Order 14355 was signed on Sept. 30, 2025. It was published in the Federal Register on Oct. 7, 2025.
The order says pediatric cancer is still the main disease-related cause of death for children in the United States from ages 1 to 19. It says the number of cases has risen by more than 40% since 1975. It says reversing that trend is a top priority of the Make America Healthy Again Commission, which an executive order of Feb. 13, 2025, created, and it links that priority to a joint address to Congress in March.
The order says artificial intelligence is a way to reach that aim sooner. It says that in 2019 the administration created the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative, funded at $50 million a year for 10 years, to gather, produce, and study childhood cancer data. The order says the initiative is building data systems, adding data, and using the data for discoveries.
The order says artificial intelligence could extend that work for cancer in children, adolescents, and young adults. It says that use has the potential to change care and research, including earlier and better tests, identification of cures, and treatment choices, if individual privacy protections are in place.
The commission must coordinate with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto. The order says the work should line up with implementation of America’s AI Action Plan. The first task is to find ways to speed artificial-intelligence solutions at the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative.
That includes making data platforms and tools available in the initiative’s data ecosystem and funding research at National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers. The order says those projects should combine records from many sources so they are ready for artificial-intelligence analysis, and use the tools to select clinical-trial participants more effectively. They should also apply the tools to complex biological systems, improve forecasts of how a patient responds, how disease advances, and how toxic a treatment is, and turn multi-omics data — measurements from several biological layers — and imaging data into markers for diagnosis, outlook, and therapy.
A further priority, the order says, is better trial design, access, and results. Projects should use several kinds of data and artificial intelligence so trials draw more from the information they collect and are easier to reach, recruit for, run, and interpret.
In another section, the commission must also coordinate with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Director of the National Institutes of Health, along with the health secretary and the assistant for science and technology. The order directs them to identify and carry out ways to increase investment from existing federal funds for the data initiative and other federal pediatric-cancer efforts. It also directs them to encourage private companies to use the most advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, as far as possible.
The health secretary, consulting that assistant, must work to fold artificial intelligence into current work on making health records interoperable, meaning able to be shared across systems. The order says the goal is to let electronic health records and claims data inform private-sector and academic research and trial design, while patients and parents control their health information. The secretary must also work to finish standards for patient data used with artificial intelligence, covering both structured and unstructured records and allowing exchanges that are safe and meet privacy rules.
The order defines artificial intelligence by pointing to an existing federal statute. It says the directives must be carried out consistent with applicable law and subject to available appropriations. It states that the order does not create a right or benefit anyone can enforce in court against the United States or its officers, and that it does not impair authority already given to agencies or the budget director’s functions on budget, administrative, or legislative proposals.
The order does not set a deadline for the assignments. It does not give a separate date for when the directives take effect.