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| | | News and views you ought to know about:- POINT: AI holds great promise for healthcare, and President Trump’s action plan is a good first step. “The Trump administration’s AI Action Plan, released last week, is an exciting and welcome development. It evinces close attention to building public and professional trust for AI technology through transparent and ethical oversite and to accelerate national standards for safety, performance and interoperability. ...
- “AI isn’t just the future of healthcare, it is very much the present. The government’s new AI Action Plan is an encouraging step forward to bring some of these issues to the forefront while AI health technology is still in its infancy. As physicians, we have an opportunity, and a responsibility, to work today to ensure that AI transform health care and not merely automate inefficiencies. We are excited to build on that momentum and work together to create a future where innovation enhances every patient encounter and augments every physician’s care.”
- John Whyte, MD, MPH, chief executive officer of the American Medical Association, and Margaret Lozovatsky, MD, the AMA’s chief medical information officer, writing in The Hill
- COUNTERPOINT: President Trump has decided to let the AI gang run free and wild. What could go wrong? “The net result of Trump’s ‘AI Action’ plan is that tech firms will be allowed to develop AI free from bothersome regulations and safeguards. Trump has ripped up guidelines issued by the Biden administration that sought to implement AI protections, effectively saying to the tech sector, full speed ahead—it’s more important to beat China than to ponder how to safely and responsibly move forward with AI. …
- “Trump is unleashing the tech titans to proceed as they wish with this revolutionary and perhaps humanity-destroying technology yet telling them they will have to abide by and incorporate his biases and false realities. It’s a deal with the devil—to which the companies are saying, ‘Fine.’ They get to amass fortunes, and Trump, the wannabe autocrat, gets to control what AI ‘thinks.’ What’s at risk is merely civilization as we know it—and the truth.”
- Or maybe the White House’s AI Action Plan will spur a mix of positive opportunities, negative challenges—and neutral adjustments. That’s about how some legal experts see things. In the coming months, healthcare entities “should expect to see agency activity to implement the Plan in addition to federal AI initiatives and opportunities,” write four watchers with the D.C.-based law firm Crowell & Moring. “In addition to monitoring developments coming out of the AI Action Plan, these entities should also begin examining their AI governance plans as well as identifying state law compliance obligations to harmonize compliance efforts.” Their brief is here.
- In pursuing the monetization of generative AI, healthcare stakeholders may have to choose between two competing options. One is led by AI vendors vying for first FDA approvals of products in their categories. That’s pretty much how things work now. The other is led by clinicians. It would allow patients to use readily available, inexpensive large language models to manage their chronic diseases and assess new symptoms.
- In what Robert Pearl, MD, calls the “entrepreneurial tech” model, the current system makes it expensive to develop tools this way. It’s costly to train the models and no cheap affair to get them OK’d for the U.S. market. Plus the companies may face lawsuits that are pricey to defend against and can be even more exorbitant if the plaintiffs win. “Still, if successful, these tools would likely command high prices and deliver substantial profits.”
- In an innovative system stressing clinician-led GenAI education, clinicians, educators or national specialty societies would pick the paths and share in the benefits. Such a system would be less lucrative for industry but more empowering for patients and healthcare professionals alike. “Unlike startup models that require tens of millions in funding and FDA approval, these educational tools could be developed and deployed quickly by doctors and other clinicians,” Pearl writes. “Because they teach patients how to use existing tools rather than offer direct medical advice, they would avoid many regulatory burdens and face reduced legal liability. And with 40% of physicians already working part-time or in gig roles, there are hundreds, or likely thousands, of experts ready to contribute.”
- Pearl, a Stanford professor, bestselling author and former CEO of the Permanente Medical Group, notes that the two paths could represent a both/and choice rather than an either/or situation. Forbes published his piece fleshing out some pros and cons of each way Aug. 4.
- AI adoption is greatly outpacing AI security and governance. There’s nothing new in that observation, but a new IBM report puts numbers to the scope of the problem across all involved industries and economic sectors. And some of the figures are frightening. Of the 13% of 600 organizations breached from March 2024 through February of this year, a shocking 97% reported having no controls in place for AI access. “As a result, 60% of AI-related security incidents led to compromised data and 31% led to operational disruption,” the IBM analysts write. As always, healthcare breaches were the costliest. Victimized organizations lost an average $7.42 recovering, and they took the longest to identify and contain break-ins. At an average 279 days, those reactive steps too more than five weeks longer than the overall average, 241 days. Download the report.
- From AIin.Healthcare’s sibling news 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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| | | Some current thinking has it that patient experience (PX) scores are the truest indicators of care quality. The notion is that PX trumps even clinical outcomes since the former often encompasses the latter: Patients tend to fill out satisfaction forms only after their episodes of care are complete and their outcomes known. A new report from PressGaney justifies that thought process, noting that most “Likelihood to Recommend” scores have been trending upward since the pre-COVID baseline. The analyst-authors looked at data from more than 10 million patient encounters at more than 2,500 hospitals and almost 500,000 medical offices. The glaring exception was inpatient scores, which dipped by -2.2 points while others rose—medical practices by +2.8 points, ambulatory surgery centers by +1.7 points and emergency departments by +0.5 points. And even inpatient scores, despite their anomalous downward slope, ticked up +0.9 points year over year since 2019. “These gains point to the impact of targeted efforts around communication, coordination and access—especially in outpatient care, which tends to allow for more nimbleness than inpatient care,” the PressGaney analysts note. The researchers don’t focus on AI’s role in PX improvement. However, they offer three observations on the technology’s potential for maximizing patient experience scores. 1. Among AI’s most powerful contributions is its potential to ‘enable humanity’—amplifying empathy, connection and care. By delivering real-time insights and recommendations, AI “helps caregivers anticipate needs, respond swiftly and strengthen their connection with patients,” the report authors write. “Predictive rounding, for example, leverages data patterns to identify at-risk patients, making rounds more focused, purposeful and compassionate.” More: ‘Rather than replacing the human touch, AI amplifies it, enabling caregivers to spend more time with patients and optimize every interaction.’
2. AI helps organizations listen at scale. “By triggering service alerts from patient comments and digital feedback, care teams can resolve issues before they escalate,” the PressGaney analysts point out. “Integrating real-time patient experience data into the EMR can surface opportunities to recognize staff—allowing leaders to reinforce positive behaviors and strengthen team culture.” More: ‘In every case, the goal remains the same: to deliver care that is both technically competent and deeply personal.’
3. AI comment-summary widgets distill thousands of open-ended patient comments into clear, actionable themes.“This helps care teams quickly identify what matters most, especially in complex settings like unplanned care,” the authors note before adding: ‘Paired with human-experience (HX) integrations that capture feedback closer to the moment of care, these insights support faster action and more consistent performance.’
Download the full report, or read it in your browser, from here.
- In other research news:
- FDA approvals:
- Funding:
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