Glossary
Assistive AI
Also called: adjunctive AI, clinician-in-the-loop AI
A system whose output informs a clinician who remains responsible for the decision, which describes almost all authorized medical AI.
Assistive AI produces a mark, a score, a priority, or a draft, and a clinician decides what it means. Nearly every device on the FDA list is assistive, and the clearances say so explicitly.
Where This Gets Misread
Assistive is a regulatory description of the intended workflow, not a guarantee of how the tool is used. Whether a clinician meaningfully evaluates the output or defers to it is an empirical question about deployment conditions, and the evidence on deference is not encouraging.