Newswatch: AI researchers weigh in, AI humanizes healthcare, ‘the worst AI will ever be,’ more

Buzzworthy developments of the past few days. 

• More than half of 4,200+ AI researchers around the world, 57%, believe the technology will improve access to healthcare. Of course, that select slice of the population tends to be more excited about AI than the average person in the street. Still, it’s not nothing that 54% of the surveyed AI scholars expect their favorite technology will deliver more benefits than risks. (A prior survey of U.K. non-expert residents found only 13% on board with that proposition.) The new survey was conducted in the U.K. and is featured in a news item published in Nature. The article summarizes a study yet to be published. Interestingly, the study shows only 21% of AI researchers think artificial general AI is inevitable. By comparison, half of the same 4,200+ don’t believe AGI is even achievable. Nature item here, pre-published study here. 
   
• For their part, physicians are almost evenly split between those who do and don’t believe AI can accurately predict patient outcomes. The sample group is made up of doctors signed up to the global social media platform Sermo. The platform is primarily aimed at physicians and counts 1 million of them among its total base of 1.3 million users. Sermo asked a number of interesting questions of its doctor users. One item asked the docs about their biggest concern regarding AI in healthcare. Some 22% named misuse of, or overreliance on, AI in clinical settings. Sermo comments that medicine “can never be just about data—it requires empathy, ethical reasoning and personalized judgment that AI can’t replicate.” Striking an optimal balance between AI-driven efficiency and human expertise, the company notes, is “key to ensuring patient-centered, high-quality care.” More survey results and analysis here.
   
• Contrary to popular misgivings, AI may be improving the human touch in healthcare. A healthcare entrepreneur thinks the tide has turned in that direction. He credits ambient AI’s ability to free up physicians for face-to-face time with patients. “This melding of artificial and (human) emotional intelligence—which I call AI+EQ—is unlocking a new golden age in healthcare,” writes Owen Tripp, co-founder of Included Health, in Fast Company. “The very best doctors and nurses have always had a rare mix of experience, expertise, empathy and emotional intelligence. But before AI, that secret sauce was near-impossible to bottle up and scale. That’s exactly what we’re doing now.” Hear him out here. 
   
• Giving ambient AI some love from medicine’s front line is a relieved physician. This one happens to serve his academic medical institution as associate chief of AI and digital health. “We saw that our providers who used Nabla were working less at home,” says Daniel Kortsch, MD, of Denver Health and the University of Colorado. “They had less ‘pajama time.’” That’s a reference to the hours many doctors have logged working at home into the night. “People become doctors not because they want to write notes and fill out paperwork,” Kortsch tells Fox News. “It’s because they want that interaction—and ambient AI gives it to them.”
   
• Right now, AI is the worst it will ever be. Not because it’s bad but because it’s getting better every day. Given the bright horizons, there’s no time like now for health information management (HIM) professionals to stake a claim in the still-fresh soil. Rose T. Dunn, MBA, notes the opportunity and lays out some ways for HIM people to till, plant and harvest. Forecasting pandemic-like conditions, to name just one example, “has real promise,” Dunn writes at ICD-10 Monitor. “HIM professionals who are involved or wish to be involved in health information exchanges can be on the ground floor of this initiative.” Dunn, chief operating officer with a St. Louis-based healthcare consulting firm, is a past president of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and recipient of AHIMA’s distinguished member and legacy awards. Get the rest of her AI-leadership tips for HIM professionals here. 
   
• AI has outdone physicians. Again. This time, blinded reviewers rated an algorithm’s recommendations as optimal 77% of the time. Physicians making recommendations for the same symptoms only notched 67% optimal. What’s more, the AI’s outputs were less likely to be rated as potentially harmful than human judgments, 2.8% to 4.6%. The case descriptions concentrated on scenarios common to primary care. Healio has coverage. 
   
• Watch out, da Vinci. There’s a new competitor in your class of surgical robots. It’s Johnson & Johnson’s Ottava. This week word came down that it has successfully completed a gastric bypass operation. The procedure was part of a clinical trial for which Ottava had an investigational device exemption. Along with making the announcement, J&J said it will seek to expand its expected FDA approval to other abdominal surgeries. The da Vinci product line is from market dominator Intuitive Surgical, which has something of a lock on robotic general surgery, as MedTech Dive notes in its coverage of the J&J development. 
   
• AI is helping provider organizations stay on top of accreditation. And finding an appreciative adopter base in Southeast Asia and the broader Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. In Singapore, for example, the Ministry of Health and Health Sciences Authority has issued draft guidelines that stress explainability and data quality to ensure safe AI use in medical settings, TNGlobal reports. “AI systems minimize human errors in documentation and reporting, ensuring accurate and complete data submitted for accreditation,” writes ReHack features editor Zac Amos. “AI [also] enables medical facilities to maintain ongoing compliance rather than preparing for accreditation only when audits are scheduled, making the process less stressful and more predictable.” More here. 
   
• Recent research in the news:
   
  • University of Maryland: While AI could be a game changer in predicting health outcomes, it should not be the only method
     
  • ESCMID Global 2025: AI Lung Ultrasound Outperforms Experts in Tuberculosis Diagnosis
     
  • Texas A&M: Brain-like AI promises game-changing advances in small drones
     
  • Queen Mary University of London:AI-generated ‘synthetic scarred hearts’ aid atrial fibrillation treatment
     
• Notable FDA approvals:
   
  • FDA clears AI-powered echocardiography software 
     
  • Opportunistic screening tool for osteoporosis nabs FDA clearance
     
• Funding news of note: 
   
  • Isomorphic Labs bags $600M for drug design
     
  • hellocare raises $47M to accelerate AI-assisted virtual care and turn hospital rooms into smart, connected care environments
     
  • 6 of the best AI exchange-traded funds to buy for 2025
     
• From AIin.Healthcare’s news partners:
   
  • Radiology Business: RadNet to acquire breast imaging AI vendor iCAD for $103M
     
  • Health Imaging: American-made GPT-4 knows no borders, translates radiology reports into different languages