Industry Watcher’s Digest

Buzzworthy developments of the past few days.

• GenAI can give patients good info on prescription drugs. But the word can is doing a lot of work here. Researchers found this out when they queried Bing’s AI chatbot, an adaptation of Microsoft Copilot, on 10 common questions about the 50 most popular outpatient drugs. Of 500 answers the tool offered, most would have been beyond the reading comprehension levels of people without a college degree. Further, a subset of 20 select questions brought back potentially harmful responses at a 66% clip. The study’s authors, from the Friedrich-Alexander University in Germany, advise physicians exercise caution when recommending AI-powered search engines “until more precise and reliable alternatives are available.” Study summary with link to full paper. 
   
• Speaking of Microsoft, the Big Tech titan is touting its latest work in healthcare-specific AI. The efforts include advances aimed at numerous categories of end users, model developers and technology partners. Example of the latter: Microsoft is working with Epic on AI-equipped applications for nurses. The announcement quotes a Duke nursing executive who lauds ambient AI for automating tedious tasks. This assistance, the exec says, “helps alleviate burnout and gives us more time to connect with our patients at the bedside, where we truly make a difference.”
   
• Sleep. Food. Movement. Stress management. Connection. These are “the five key behaviors” that affect a person’s level of wellness. So says Arianna Huffington a few months after co-founding Thrive AI Health with Sam Altman. Attending to the five elements all at once amounts to taking a “miracle drug,” Huffington said at a recent event hosted by Fortune. AI can administer this good-for-what-ails-you therapy on the strength of its capacity to hyper-personalize health-improvement strategies, Huffington suggests. 
   
• AI is even good for healthcare’s bottom line. How so? A Forbes contributing writer breaks it down in an opinion piece posted Oct. 15. “Focusing on the trifecta of AI, cybersecurity and payment integrity presents a powerful strategy to simplify the business of healthcare,” the writer, healthtech CEO Rajeev Ronanki, asserts. “The future of healthcare isn’t just about adopting new technologies—it’s about creating a new paradigm of care that’s more intelligent, secure and aligned with the needs of patients and business stakeholders alike.”
   
• Healthcare leaders: Involve healthcare workers in selecting and adopting AI tools—or else. Frontline clinicians who’ll use the technology can be your best allies or your most formidable adversaries. That’s the warning of healthcare AI startup founder Abdel Mahmoud. Writing for Fast Company, he states that bringing healthcare practitioners into the conversation about AI is nothing less than a moral matter—“the right thing to do.” If you care about patient safety and patient outcomes, he stresses, doctors and nurses need to be part of the conversation. 
   
• Johnson & Johnson goes full transparency on AI. Either that or it’s just showing off. In any case, it’s good to see the 138-year-old healthcare stalwart opening up about its AI works in progress. These include applying AI to improve surgical procedures, speed drug discoveries, identify research participants and advancing the technology on three other fronts. In the next few years, “AI is going to play an even bigger role” than it does now, says CIO Jim Swanson. “When we use AI,” he adds, “it’s always with a purpose.” 
   
• Which AI use cases earn Likes from middle- and high-schoolers? Text-based tools, homework helps, AI search engines and chatbots get a thumbs-up. Image and video generators make the grade too. The findings are from a survey report published by Common Sense Media. Generally speaking, young people and their parents or guardians “recognize a mix of potential benefits and risks associated with educational applications of generative AI platforms,” the authors write. “Many think these technologies will impact their future education plans and job prospects.” Full report. 
   
• We’re in good company. But that may be cold comfort. When it comes to worker risk for AI replacement, healthcare is about even with education and community & social services. All three have “medium exposure” to the hazard, according to a new analysis from Brookings. “Several very large occupational groups—such as business, management and healthcare work—stand to undergo significant exposure to generative AI,” Brookings finds. “This alone forecasts the technology’s broad implications for the labor market.” Important to note that the analysis looks at healthcare and other economic sectors overall. Prior research has shown patient-facing healthcare workers at very low risk of losing jobs to AI or other automation technologies. 
   
• Recent research in the news:
   
  • Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences: Fighting the opioid epidemic: AI and optimization model leads to more accessible, equitable treatment resource distribution
     
  • University of Pennsylvania: Training medical AI with knowledge, not shortcuts 
     
  • Ludwig Institute: An AI-powered pipeline for personalized cancer vaccines
     
  • University Hospital of Bonn: AI does not necessarily lead to more efficiency in clinical practice, research shows
     
• Notable FDA Approvals:
   
  • AccurKardia receives FDA Breakthrough Device designation for first-of-its-kind aortic valve stenosis ECG-based AI screening software
     
• Funding news of note:
   
  • Penn Secures $7M in ARPA-H funding for AI in breast cancer care and more
     
  • Parakeet Health launches with $3M seed round, GenAI voice platform for patient engagement
     
  • Yung Sidekick raises $825K for AI-powered progress notes for mental-health therapists
     
• From AIin.Healthcare’s news partners:
   
  • Cardiovascular Business: FDA grants AI-powered ECG screening tool for aortic stenosis its breakthrough device designation
     
  • Health Imaging: ChatGPT is overly worried about ED patients
     
  • Cardiovascular Business: Medicare administrative contractors approve coverage of AI-enabled quantitative CT