Digital Transformation

This evolution of healthcare involves using technology to improve diagnosis, treatments, monitor patients, enhance hospital operations and culture, and bolster consumer-focused care. This includes virtual reality tools, wearable devices, workflow software, health apps and other digital health tools.

Venerable medical journal spawns AI-focused offspring

The 211-year-old New England Journal of Medicine has birthed an online-only monthly journal that will take on “some of the most pressing questions in medicine through the application of AI in the clinic.”

Cynthia Rudin, PhD. Photo courtesy of Duke University.

Prominent tech scholar: AI ‘feels like a runaway train that we’re chasing on foot’

Cynthia Rudin, PhD, is a highly regarded computer scientist who’s been eyeing the advance of artificial intelligence into society with equal parts enthusiasm and concern.  

QTrobot (left) and Misty. Photos by Hatice Gunes/University of Cambridge.

Toylike robot pleases counseling clients where humanoid counterpart struggles to connect

When human counselors are unavailable to provide work-based wellness coaching, robots can substitute—as long as the workers are comfortable with emerging technologies and the machines aren’t overly humanlike.

Google ups activity in 4 reaches of healthcare AI

Along with expanding research into large-language models to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPC, the search-engine king is working on AI for improving maternal care, ultrasound access and tuberculosis screening.

To juice medical AI adoption, try a little Aristotelian persuasion

Wary consumers can be convinced to allow AI into their healthcare habits by communications campaigns tuned to the ancient rhetorical categories of ethos, pathos and logos. 

Ulcerative colitis AI identifies activity vs. remission, predicts future flareups

Researchers across the pond have developed and externally validated an AI model that can predict flareups of ulcerative colitis. 

Radiological AI revisited from the consumer’s-eye view: ‘People need to stop calling pattern recognition artificial intelligence’

By now it’s a difficult-to-dispute likelihood: AI won’t replace doctors making diagnoses, but doctors who use AI will displace doctors who don’t use AI. The hypothesis gets a fresh airing out from the vantage point of the general public. 

Academic envelope-pushers rev up biocomputing, OI and ‘intelligence in a dish’

Does the future of digital healthcare lie with biocomputers powered by engineered cultures derived from human brain cells? If so, it’s already underway in Baltimore.

Around the web

U.S. health systems are increasingly leveraging digital health to conduct their operations, but how health systems are using digital health in their strategies can vary widely.

When human counselors are unavailable to provide work-based wellness coaching, robots can substitute—as long as the workers are comfortable with emerging technologies and the machines aren’t overly humanlike.

A vendor that supplies EHR software to public health agencies is partnering with a health-tech startup in the cloud-communications space to equip state and local governments for managing their response to the COVID-19 crisis.