Industry Watcher’s Digest
Buzzworthy developments of the past few days.
- The Netherlands needs 1 in 4 workers to work in healthcare. But only 1 is available out of every 6. No wonder the Dutch are looking at AI and imagining what it might do to help compensate for the shortfall. The point came up in a discussion held in the nation’s capital June 9. The event was hosted and covered by the Washington Diplomat with co-sponsorships from Kaiser Permanente, Glass Health and Microsoft. Among the presenters was Godfrey Xuereb, Malta’s ambassador to the U.S. “Very few people can grasp the long-term effects of noncommunicable diseases,” Xuereb said. “Talk to a 16-year-old and say, ‘You know, if you eat unhealthy now, when you’re 50 you might have diabetes.’ Predictive analysis is a very strong tool in disease prevention.”
- Healthcare payers seeking the biggest bang for their AI buck should apply the tech to three domains. These are sales and marketing, utilization management (including prior authorization) and IT. Less impactful are algorithms tuned to care management, risk accuracy and network design and contracting. McKinsey lets the numbers do the talking on these and more findings in a report released June 5.
- The threat of AI hallucinations mucking up patient care is very real—and readily avoidable. All users have to do is ensure human oversight, use observability tools, promote awareness, improve data accuracy and foster collaboration. OK, that’s a lot. But those who take the time to chunk it up and delegate it into five discrete sub-projects can pull it off. And given the stakes, pull it off they must. AI expert Shashank Agarwal offers tips in Forbes.
- Healwell AI is laying out the equivalent of $24.5 million to acquire VeroSource Solutions. Healwell AI’s products deal with preventative care, VeroSource’s with secure integration of multi-sourced health data into a single cloud-based platform. Both companies are based in Canada. Healwell expects the move to speed its pursuit of early disease detection, according to an announcement (which includes details on the deal’s sophisticated finances).
- In similar manner, Evolent is acquiring ‘certain assets’ of Machinify. The assets at hand are geared toward helping payers use AI to manage prior authorizations. Evolent, which specializes in supporting care of patients with complex conditions, wants to use the incoming tech to “leapfrog standard industry processes” involved in prior auth. Evolent plans to let the software help increase first-pass approvals while “streamlining manual data collection and analysis associated with complex medical decision-making.” The announcement offers some particulars but doesn’t disclose financial details.
- Over in the education sector, students have a more nuanced perspective on the ethics of generative AI than you might expect. An education researcher who conducted focus groups with students as well as teachers tells Education Week that high-schoolers don’t see AI as the technological equivalent of a classmate who can write their papers for them. “Instead, they use AI tools for the same reason adults do—to cope with a stressful, overwhelming workload,” EW reporter Alyson Klein writes. And, contrary to popular suspicion, most are not using generative AI for “wholesale plagiarism.” That’s what they’re telling education researchers conducting focus groups on AI ethics, anyway. For now let’s take these representative students at their word, shall we? After all, today’s earnest teenagers are tomorrow’s healthcare professionals. Before you know it, we’re all going to have to trust their AI ethics as well as their scientific skills.
- A man dying of cancer is building an interactive AI version of himself. He’s not doing this as a stay against mortality. He’s doing it for the wife he’ll be leaving behind. After he’s gone, she’s going to want to ask the avatar questions to which only her late husband would know the answer. She says so herself. NPR has the story.
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Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.