Healthcare AI News 5/10/23

News

AI-powered drug discovery could represent a $50 billion opportunity for big pharma according to a Bloomberg article, which notes that one drug company paid $4 billion for drug that was developed by a startup in just six months. The psoriasis drug is expected to generate up to $3.7 billion in annual sales.

Microsoft eliminates the waitlist for the AI version of its Bing search engine, adds persistent chats and visual capabilities, and announces third-party plug-in capability.

Microsoft expands access to the preview version of Microsoft 365 Copilot, which adds AI capability to the whiteboard function of Teams, integrates the DALL-E image generator into PowerPoint, offers writing suggestions from within Outlook, helps users create lists and generate ideas in OneNote, and creates a learning plan in Viva Learning.

AI drug discovery platform vendor Insilico Medicine offers a free course on using its PandaOmics generative AI tool for disease modeling and target discovery.

Salt Lake City-based AI drug discovery company Recursion, which has five products in Phase 1 or later studies, acquires two competitors.

The CEO of Databricks says that the best way to invest in AI is to think of it as a gold rush, in which you want to be the company selling picks and shovels to gold-seekers. He also recommends investing in companies that control proprietary data, such as from medical records.

Lucem Health, a portfolio company of Mayo Clinic Platform that turns AI advancements into point-of-care solutions, raises $7.7 million in a Series A funding round.

Research

Researchers apply AI to early, large-scale diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, projecting that analyzing the EHR data of one million people could identify 70 who are highest risk who have not been diagnosed with the aggressive cancer.

Opinion

An Atlantic article warns that ChatGPT is following a similar trajectory as mostly-forgotten IBM Watson, whose over-publicized rush to commercialization left it with little market visibility as it ended up being used to automate mundane, back-end B2B tools. The article dismisses IBM’s failed Watson oncology work with Memorial Sloan Kettering and MD Anderson Cancer Center as “a swole Clippy fed on enterprise data and techno-optimism, [that] could barely read doctors’ handwriting, let alone disrupt oncology.” The author says that ChatGPT, like Watson, is being commercialized to create “banal consumer and enterprise software” that is invisible to users.

A BMJ Global Health analysis piece calls for regulation of AI and a moratorium on self-improving artificial general intelligence, saying that AI poses threats to health and well-being.

Former VA Secretary David Shulkin, MD lists “25 Ways Generative AI Will Change Healthcare” that include specific companies:

• Ibex – improve diagnostic accuracy from pathology.
• Galileo – patient navigation of health and treatment options.
• Cadence and Kaii – remote patient monitoring.
• Google Health and Babylon Health – improved diagnosis using electronic patient records.
• Saama – drug discovery.
• Dexcare – access to care.
• Indegene and Edocate – new methods of interactive medical education.
• Cedar – billing.
• TriNetX and MD Clone – clinical trial design.
• Theator – surgical learning systems.
• Eleos – analysis of behavioral health session to improve outcomes.
• CareJourney, Datavant, and Voiceitt – reducing disparities and addressing disabilities.
• Aldoc – early intervention using unstructured data and image analysis.
• Ixlayer and TytoCare – point-of-care testing.
• Sparta Science – identifying fall risk.

In a preview of how ChatGPT might find its way into health system digital front doors to improve access, Expedia is testing a chat-based trip planner, while a Zillow add-on allows conversational access to its real estate listings.

Other

UPMC CTO Chris Carmody says that the health system is working on AI chatbots that can answer patient questions about insurance coverage, but adds that the goal is to support rather than replace healthcare professionals.

A Tennessee radiologist writes 16 research papers in four months, five of which were published in journals, using ChatGPT.

An ED doctor uses ChatGPT to perform roleplay that teaches doctors how to break bad news to patients. ChatGPT provided the scenarios and feedback.

Resources and Tools

• Holly – sends weekly lists of LinkedIn candidates for open positions and engages them in conversation to book interviews.
• EvidenceHunt – performs advanced searches of PubMed entries.
• Law ChatGPT – creates legal documents from user prompts and templates.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.