As speculation continues to swirl around AI’s forthcoming transformation of healthcare, fueling boom times in AI research, a review of the literature has turned up scant evidence the technology is benefiting patients at the consumer level.

VR is quickly becoming a new alternative to more traditional methods of pain management, NPR reported, with patients escaping their chronic pain by strapping on a VR headset and becoming immersed in a different reality.

DeepMind Technologies Ltd., the Google/Alphabet-owned elephant in the AI research room, has lost more than $1 billion over the past three years. And it owes another billion to creditors who’ll be looking for their money back, with interest, over the next year or so.

Machine-learning analyses of satellite images can help identify communities needing healthcare services in some of the most remote parts of the planet, according to a study published Aug. 14 in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

An eight-hospital health system in the Pacific Northwest has set up an AI-based “mission control center” to manage patient capacity, bed availability, hospital transfers and patients’ health status.

People with Type 1 diabetes may soon be able to count on an algorithm to keep their blood sugar levels within a healthy range, as research to tap the power of Big Data for automating personalized glucose monitoring and insulin delivery is underway. 

When trained on routine health data and observation notes gathered by homecare aides, AI can be used to anticipate medical emergencies in the elderly one to two weeks ahead of an incident. The advance insights can both guide preventive care and save on unnecessary hospital and transportation costs.

GE Healthcare has joined an Australian AI-powered project aimed improving the diagnosis and monitoring of brain aneurysms.

One of the medical specialties highly hopeful in AI’s potential to guide care is neurosurgery. That’s because patients with traumatic brain injuries often present care teams and family members with an especially thorny decision. 

Last week the U.K. government announced plans to pour £250 million (around $301.5 million) into a fledgling AI lab run by the National Health Service (NHS). The work is to focus on advancing medical science in various arenas, including cancer care and dementia. This week the skeptics started weighing in.