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| | | News and views you ought to know about:- AI has begun overhauling the means by which cancer research is conducted. And a new generation of AI-native researchers is leading the way. This next crop of scientists is AI-native, interdisciplinary and comfortable challenging assumptions. So reports Alicia Zhou, PhD, chief executive of the NIH-funded Cancer Research Institute, in a blog post. Encapsulating salient points made at a recent panel discussion, Zhou adds to the above observation: “By removing traditional barriers and giving emerging talent room to lead, institutions can accelerate innovation and move discoveries from bench to bedside faster than ever.”
- Other takeaways from the discussion as relayed by Zhou, who moderated the session: 1.) AI is poised to reshape every step of cancer drug development. 2.) The future hinges on the right kind of data—not just more of it. 3.) Immunotherapy is evolving, and AI can help unlock its full potential. 4.) Scientific creativity and collaboration are critical.
- “We need better guesses,” panelist Alex Marson, MD, PhD, of the Gladstone Institutes and UC-San Francisco, told attendees. “How do we expand our imagination and hear hypotheses from AI that we wouldn’t have come up with ourselves?”
- The Trump Administration would like to train healthcare AI on patient data. The advance peek at its plan comes courtesy of Politico, which obtained a first draft of HHS’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) document. If finalized as is, the plan would let the National Institutes of Health under the leadership of Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, build and maintain a digital platform for distributing and safeguarding the real-world data. True to the vision of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the draft report favors diet and exercise over medication for chronic conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure, Politico reports.
- The draft further calls for concerted FDA oversight of approved products over their lifecycles. Device categories would include products equipped with AI. In fact, the agency may decide to concentrate on those. According to Politico, the leaked document also says HHS would “research how AI could be deployed to assist with chronic disease care—including how it can be used to diagnose people earlier, personalize treatment and monitor patients as well as use predictive models to prevent hospitalizations.”
- And while he’s at it, Kennedy will want to work with the FTC and the DOJ to crack down on social media influencers and consumer telehealth companies that mislead the public with slick promotions of prescription drugs.
- The American Medical Association has compiled a list of 10 things every AI-adopting provider org should spell out in a policy paper. At the top of the list are definitions of common AI terms, descriptions of risks to patient safety and data security, and prohibited AI uses “such as entering patients’ personal health information into publicly available AI tools.” The list is just one part of what AMA calls its AI toolkit. More here.
- Some Empire Staters like what their governor is doing to support innovation in healthcare with AI. It’s the Trump Administration they’re calling on the carpet. Which New Yorkers are we talking about? Those inclined to agree with Winthrop “Win” Thurlow. He’s executive director of LifeSciencesNY, a membership organization that serves as an advocate for New York’s medical device and life sciences industry. “Gov. Kathy Hochul’s pioneering Empire AI consortium is providing a blueprint for leveraging shared infrastructure and academic resources to promote AI research and development,” Thurlow states in an opinion piece published in the upstate-based Daily Messenger. “Unfortunately, decisions coming from the White House that chase researchers to other countries and a slate of bills introduced or passed in states like New York have the potential to dismantle this progress.” Hear him out.
- Meanwhile some Golden Staters like what some of their elected officials are doing to strengthen an existing law for the AI age. The standing law prohibits unlicensed poseurs from presenting themselves as medical professionals. The bolstering measure is a bill that would explicitly extend such prohibition to anyone propagating AI-generated content and interactivity for that purpose. So far the bill has sponsorship from nine Democrats and no Republicans. Analyzing the new proposal, a lawyer with a New York City-based firm, Epstein Becker Green, asserts that “the days of operating in a regulatory gray zone are numbered.” The regulatory perimeter around healthcare AI, adds Alapp Shah, JD, MPH, “is tightening such that states may begin to legislate how AI can present itself to the public—not just what it does in the background.” Get Atty. Shah’s full take here.
- What’s best for the patient? That’s the No. 1 question every user of clinical AI should be asking, case by case, as the technology continues to proliferate in healthcare. So maintains Björn Zoëga, MBBS, PhD, chief executive officer at King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. “The field is facing a patient-doctor-AI triangle dilemma—the patient needs to trust the doctor, who needs to trust AI,” Zoëga writes in a piece published Aug. 19 by Fast Company. “AI may be better and faster at identifying rare cancers or subtle diagnostic patterns, but only a doctor can consider a patient’s story, their social context, their fears—and translate a diagnosis into a treatment plan they can understand and embrace.”
- We have seen healthcare’s high-tech future, and it is in … wait. Robotic automation for administrative processes? Yes, that’s right. Robotic process automation, or RPA, “doesn’t diagnose cancer or save lives in the operating room,” the editors at Pymnts explain. But, till now, healthcare revenue management and payments processing “has been a labor-intensive, error-prone operation that can hemorrhage cash through administrative waste. In a sector where the business of care often collides with the practice of medicine, RPA innovations can increasingly help hospitals stay solvent, patients stay informed and clinicians focus on care rather than paperwork.” Get the rest.
- From AIin.Healthcare’s sibling outlets:
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| | | The ambient AI playbook: Lessons from two leading health systems At the recent CompassionIT Summit, leaders from Akron Children’s Hospital and Denver Health shared powerful lessons from rolling out ambient documentation to over 1,500 clinicians. Their biggest takeaway? Stories, not stats, drive adoption. Whether it was a heartfelt testimonial that swayed an entire department or a 60-second Nabla demo that eliminated training anxiety, the common thread was simplicity, authenticity, and clinician-centered design. Read more about the way these health systems are navigating ambient AI implementation: https://dhinsights.org/news/the-ambient-ai-playbook-lessons-from-two-leading-health-systems |
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| | | The roots of medicine are in the promotion of human welfare, aka humanitarianism. Healthcare AI can either degrade or reinforce this heritage. The path it follows is more in the hands of physicians than of any other stakeholders—and rightly so. That’s the position of researchers in Brazil who defend their opinion in peer-reviewed commentary published Aug. 17. “AI has vast potential for reshaping the provision of healthcare, particularly when properly integrated into clinical practice by physicians who fully understand the complexities of caring for patients,” the authors write. “With the application of accessible technologies like wearable devices and clinically guided automated solutions, digital transformation of healthcare can happen without imposing a high cost burden on the healthcare sector—and without sacrificing an unyielding physician–patient relationship based on quality of care.” The authors are Dr. Carlos Darcy Bersot of the Federal University of São Paulo and Dr. Vitor Alves Felipe of the Brazilian National Cancer Institute. Here are five of their key points. 1. To make the leap from promise to practice, AI must reach beyond administrative tasks and become firmly integrated into patient care. “Such a necessary evolution demands leadership from individuals who understand clinical workflow intricacies and day-to-day realities of healthcare delivery,” Bersot and Felipe write. They acknowledge the crucial role played by software engineers, data scientists and AI experts before adding: ‘[T]he actual application of AI needs to be physician-led by doctors who have everyday experience with patient care and who understand where AI can most impact quality.’
2. Although so-called smartwatches and other wearables are being aggressively promoted for wellness, their integration into clinical practice has not been fully harnessed. “These devices, although costly and attention-grabbing, often [make] unproven clinical assertions,” the researchers write. “The greatest challenge is not the development of new technologies but the use of existing information: bridging it with clinical insight and transforming it into actionable clinical decisions.” ‘This vision redefines follow-up care from interval-based visits to dynamic, personalized care.’
3. For digital transformation to succeed, it must be clinically led by those most directly involved in the delivery of healthcare.“Clinicians, through their system-wide view and clinical expertise, are well positioned to lead the effective implementation of digital solutions,” the authors point out. “They must work not as passive recipients but as active creators of medical technology.” ‘The value of a doctor today is not only in clinical proficiency but also in his or her ability to understand the patient journey and the complexity of healthcare ecosystems. Such understanding, when combined with AI proficiency, can define scalable, effective, and sustainable solutions adapted to the real world.’
4. Automated AI systems possess the capacity to continuously assess treatment between visits, monitoring adherence and therapeutic efficacy dynamically. Individualized automation “enables patients to receive immediate, personalized responses to routine inquiries—not based on generalized internet information but on their physician’s protocols,” the authors note. “These types of programs reduce unnecessary physician interruption while offering patients accurate, 24/7 medical information.” ‘Rather than alienating patients from providers, this technology supports physician–patient rapport through integrated, personalized, continuous, and affordable care.’
5. Well-integrated AI has the potential to address current system weaknesses by getting [healthcare] back to the patient. “Clinically guided intelligent systems can eliminate irrelevant information, prioritize key data and allow physicians to make timely decisions,” Bersot and Felipe state before concluding: ‘The main challenge is clear: Doctors must be the leaders in the digital evolution of medicine.’
The paper is posted in full for free. |
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