AI, Governance, and the Modernization of Mexico’s Health System
Mexico is facing a pivotal moment in the modernization of its health system. The initiative led by the General Directorate for Health Modernization (DGMoS) to standardize the technical specifications for the procurement of PACS/RIS systems represents a high-impact institutional advancement: more efficient public purchasing, true interoperability, and alignment with international standards, while incorporating artificial intelligence as an enabler of structural transformation.
However, this progress raises a deeper strategic decision: whether AI will be used merely as a fragmented assistive tool, or whether it will be consolidated as a national asset for the generation of domestic clinical knowledge.
Risks of Traditional Approaches
The traditional approach — based on proprietary AI solutions embedded within each PACS/RIS — entails significant risks: technological fragmentation, vendor dependency, lack of centralized governance, increased cybersecurity attack surfaces, and, above all, the inability to generate national clinical learning. Under this model, AI is reduced to a tactical role, when its true value is structural.
AI as a Strategic Tool
Artificial intelligence must be conceived as a strategic tool of the state. Its greatest potential lies not only in diagnostic assistance but in enabling Mexico to learn from its own medical practice, develop algorithms trained on Mexican populations, reduce imported clinical biases, and generate protocols aligned with its epidemiological reality. This objective can only be achieved if AI resides on a centralized, neutral, governed, and continuously evolving platform.
The Role of the National VNA
Within this vision, the National VNA becomes the backbone of medical imaging, allowing AI to operate transversally across PACS/RIS systems from different vendors. This model ensures interoperability, technological continuity, and robust clinical, ethical, and algorithmic governance, with full traceability, auditability, and regulatory alignment.
Institutional Benefits
From an institutional standpoint, this architecture strengthens state cybersecurity, protects clinical information as a strategic national asset, and reduces operational risks across key health system institutions. Centralization does not limit innovation; on the contrary, it organizes it, regulates it, and places it at the service of long-term public policy.
PaxeraHealth’s Vision
In this context, PaxeraHealth clearly understands what Mexico requires at this stage of digital maturity. The company recognizes that true value lies not in delivering isolated technologies but in aligning with a national vision of interoperability, technological sovereignty, and clinical autonomy — one in which the country retains control over its data, its algorithms, and its medical knowledge. PaxeraHealth shares and supports this purpose, accompanying Mexico in the construction of an open, secure, and evolving architecture designed for the long term.
Standardization and Governance
The standardization of PACS/RIS technical specifications should reinforce this paradigm: requiring genuine interoperability, compatibility with a National VNA, and recognizing AI as a centralized strategic capability, not as a proprietary add-on.
Concluding Thoughts
The debate is no longer about whether to use artificial intelligence. The real institutional discussion is who governs it, where it resides, and on whose behalf it learns.
Mexico now has the opportunity to move from being a consumer of artificial intelligence to becoming a builder of its own clinical knowledge. That decision will define not only the efficiency of the health system but also its sovereignty, resilience, and capacity to respond to the health challenges of the future.
