Industry Watcher’s Digest

Buzzworthy developments of the past few days.

• 2024 will see stepped-up legislative activity around healthcare AI. It’ll come in state assemblies around the country as well as on Capitol Hill. That’s the prediction of attorneys from the Boston-based Mintz firm. Writing in the National Law Review, Daniel A. Cody, JD, and colleagues advise watching for elected reps to move on protecting patient data and privacy, heading off health inequities, warding off AI encroachment in clinical areas and, not least, keeping payers from using AI to deny care. Quick read here.
   
• Also this year, AI will continue to change the way healthcare works. No kidding, right? But exactly how the tech will work its magic is open to conjecture falling everywhere along the continuum from safe forecasts to wild guesses. To hedge against the uncertainty, smart investors will get behind pretty sure bets. Companies like Nvidia, AMD and Palantir come instantly to mind for a contributing writer at stock market advisory outfit The Motley Fool. Get the investing prognosticator’s thinking here.
   
• ‘If I want to benefit from other people’s data, is it not my duty to share my own?’ Nigam Shah, MBBS, PhD, chief data scientist at Stanford Health Care, borrows the thought from a philosophy professor to make a point about balancing data security with feeding medical science. AI is, of course, one of the feeder mechanisms. “I don’t want my [medical] record being leaked out on the internet, but I do want my information to benefit the care of hundreds or thousands of other people,” Shah says in an interview with Jeremy Faust, MD, editor-in-chief of Medpage Today. “If we want the learning health system—if we want decision support that is informed by the past experiences of patients like mine—we have to get over this privacy block and insist on secure sharing of data.” Video and transcript here.
   
• The FDA has been a pioneer in issuing regulations around AI in healthcare. In fact, it’s “really the benchmark for other countries to follow. [FDA] has been very innovative in ensuring that there is a specialized pathway for AI-based software as a medical device, even though it takes some time and money to progress through this pathway.” This is the observation of an academic Aussie admirer, Sandeep Reddy. Director of the master’s in healthcare management program at Deakin University in Australia and chairman of a healthcare AI startup, Healea, Reddy gives a wide-ranging interview on healthcare AI to Inside Precision Medicine. Read it here.
   
• Stroke survivors whose care is guided by AI do better than those without algorithmic recommendations. The improved outcomes show up as fewer recurrent strokes, heart attacks and vascular deaths. The research was conducted in China and presented in Arizona last week at an international meeting of the American Stroke Association. ASA’s own coverage here.
   
• AI proponents specifically interested in nonclinical healthcare AI have a new online presence to call their own. Launched by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), the AI Resource Hub launches on the strength of a white paper featuring input from “implementers and experts.” Announcement with link to white paper here.
   
• Which of America’s flowing waters are owed protection under the Clean Water Act? The question is harder to answer than one might think. Fortunately, there’s now an AI app to help. Developed by agricultural economists at UC-Berkeley, the tool combines aerial imagery, soil data, weather patterns and other variables to gauge the likeliness of any given stretch of H2O to fall under CWA protection. Like AI used to predict wildfires, a public health risk, the water-identifier algorithm might be considered healthcare-adjacent AI. The NIH seems to think so too, or it wouldn’t have covered the research as it does here.
   
• Beware Valentine’s Day con artists armed with AI. The FTC reports that almost 70,000 people were snookered out of $1.3 billion by “romance scammers” in 2022. These are the cold-hearted operators who trick lonely victims into sending money for the sake of long-distance “love.” This year an FBI expert is warning that emerging technologies could make the damage even worse. “What we picture is one person doing this whole work,” Special Agent Brett King tells Alabama TV station CBS42 (via the New York Post). “No, it’s a whole assembly line of people following a script, and they have really turned it into a science.” Elderly people are favorite targets. Valentine’s Day is probably no worse than any other day, but it’s a perfect time to alert someone who may be vulnerable and is close to your, you know, heart.
   
• From AIin.Healthcare’s news partners:
   
  • Radiology Business: US senators seek heightened scrutiny around AI’s use in healthcare
  • Cardiovascular Business: FDA clears advanced AI model for detecting, quantifying bleeding strokes