Industry Watcher’s Digest

Buzzworthy developments of the past few days.

• It takes time for a mental health therapist to sustain a patient’s trust over time. GenAI can help. “Rather than draining humanity from therapy, AI will flood the system with more time,” predicts Ross Harper, PhD, in Psychology Today. In his scenario, the technology would query the patient between visits, sending notes to the therapist ahead of the next face-to-face. This would cut the time needed for catch-up talk on the clock: No more “So tell me what’s happened since we last saw each other.” A one-hour session could dive straight into the productive here and now, Harper suggests. The saved time would allow the professional to more fully focus on “building a real human connection [with] empathy, active listening, relationship-building, trust and expectation management.”
   
• Extra forethought may be in order when the patient receiving talk therapy is a child or teen. The heads-up carries considerable weight when it’s put out there by legal eagles. As it is in brief commentary from representatives of the D.C.-based ArentFox Schiff law firm. “When using AI to address mental health concerns among K-12 students, policy implications must be carefully considered,” write partner David Grosso, JD, and government relations coordinator Starshine Chun. “Moving forward, school leaders, policymakers and technology developers need to consider the benefits and risks of AI-based mental health monitoring programs.” Read their brief commentary here.
   
• Bringing order to messy data, filling gaps in technological readiness and clearing regulatory hurdles. These are a few of the things the world’s largest maker of medical devices must do to make AI work for it. That’s according to the company’s chief technology and innovation officer. “The data readiness work we have to do is significant, but we know how to do it,” says the exec, Ken Washington of—wait for it—Medtronic. “We just need to get on with it.”
   
• Happy first anniversary to Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Digital Health. The open-access journal is celebrating by spotlighting a few of its most downloaded articles, including “Diagnostic Accuracy of Artificial Intelligence in Virtual Primary Care.” Mayo’s news operation says the publication has so far posted almost 100 peer-reviewed articles on healthcare’s digital transformation. Read more about the milestone here.
   
• Investment intelligencer CB Insights is out with its picks for the 100 most promising AI startups of the present year. Seven of the hot numbers are in healthcare. In alphabetical order: Bioptimus, Charm Therapeutics, Iambic, Isomorphic Labs, Genesis Therapeutics, Gesund.ai and OpenEvidence. Full list here.
   
• Healthcare AI promises to improve care quality while lowering care costs. (No kidding.) But first it will have to bust through barriers involving incentives, data and regulation. (Duh.) Now comes a scholarly tome analyzing the pickle. It’s got content contributed by health economists, physicians, philosophers and scholars in law, public health and machine learning. It’s pricey to own but reasonable to rent in digital format—$12.50 for 45 days. Description and table of contents here.
   
• The Australian government is investigating the possibly inappropriate use of AI in the country’s health system. Officials in charge of the probe took notice when complaints spiked about the suspected use of AI during telehealth drug prescribing. Evidently more than a few patients obtained prescriptions without ever speaking to a human. The Guardian has the story.
   
• Recent research roundup:
   
  • University of Southern California: USC-led study leverages artificial intelligence to predict risk of bedsores in hospitalized patients
     
  • Washington University: AI-assisted breast-cancer screening may reduce unnecessary testing
     
  • National Eye Institute: AI makes retinal imaging 100 times faster, compared to manual method
     
  • Princeton: Can language models read the genome? This one decoded mRNA to make better vaccines.
     
  • ESCMID Global Congress: ChatGPT could help reduce vaccine hesitancy and provide helpful advice on STIs
     
• From AIin.Healthcare’s news partners:
   
  • Cardiovascular Business: First-in-human trial shows potential of guiding CABG with cardiac CT and AI—no ICA required
     
  • Radiology Business: Google teams with Bayer to address radiologist burnout via AI