Morning Headlines 11/21/17

The Crisis Next Door: President Donald J. Trump is Confronting an Opioid Crisis more Severe than Original Expectations

The White House publishes revised figures on the opioid crisis, reporting that drug overdoses are now the leading cause of injury death in the United States, outnumbering traffic crashes or gun-related deaths. The report estimates that the cost of the opioid crisis in 2015 was $504 billion, or 2.8 percent of GDP.

From Katrina To Wildfires: Leveraging Technology In Disaster Response

In a Health Affairs article, former National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD explores how EHRs can help coordinate care for patients impacted by natural disasters. In 2005, DeSalvo lived in New Orleans and worked at Tulane University School of Medicine as the Vice Dean of Community Affairs and Health Policy when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city.

A New Algorithm Can Spot Pneumonia Better Than a Radiologist

Stanford University researchers have developed an AI algorithm trained on a data set of 100,000 chest x-rays that were annotated with information on 14 different diseases that turn up in the images. The algorithm has proved to be more reliable at spotting each of the 14 diseases than a group of board certified radiologists that also interpreted the images.

Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a shout-out to a $100-per-year app for doctors — here’s what it does

During its recent earnings call Apple CEO Tim Cook mentioned digital health app VisualDx, noting that the company is using Apple’s machine learning plugin to help dermatologists diagnoses skin conditions from a photo.