Healthcare AI News 3/27/24

News

OpenAI files a trademark application for a voice engine and digital voice assistants, possibly signaling that the ChatGPT developer plans to complete with Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa voice assistants.

An official with the Congressional Budget Office says that AI could reduce healthcare costs by identifying patients who could benefit from early treatment, but it could also increase costs by spurring the development of beneficial but expensive technologies or identifying more patients who need treatment.

Business

Amazon will invest another $2.75 billion in generative AI startup Anthropic, which it had already backed with $1.25 billion, valuing the maker of the Claude chatbot at $18 billion.

Healthcare business process technology vendor Sagility acquires BirchAI, which offers AI-powered call center technology.

Tennr, which use AI to extract and route data from faxes, raises $18 million in Series A funding.

The London-based non-profit Institute for Public Policy Research makes a worst-case prediction that AI could eliminate 8 million jobs with no gain in gross domestic product. The authors predict that a Phase 2 of AI implementation in which AI is allowed to execute tasks could affect financial workers, shop owners, and IT managers, while advancing to Phase 3 – where processes are built around AI and people accept interacting with avatars – could transform the work of teachers, doctors, and hospitality workers. They recommends creating policies that protect tasks where human involvement is valued, consider imposing wealth taxes or social security assistance, and raising taxes companies that replace people with AI.

Research

NIH provides funding for Treatment.ai to develop a culturally sensitive AI approach for collecting family medical history. The company says that approaches for collecting medical histories for African-American families are biased because they do not adequately capture information about blended families, non-traditional relationships, and the lack of patient information about the health of relatives.

Researchers find that AI can successfully design new drugs to overcome bacterial resistance.

ChatGPT generates discharge documents for orthopedics case that are comparable in quality to those that are created by junior orthopedic surgeons and orthopedics residents, but 10 times faster. Interestingly, while reviewers found hallucinations in four documents that ChatGPT created, that was fewer than the six that were found in the physician-generated notes.

A West Virginia University School of Pharmacy study will look at using AI to collect patient medication information from clinical and billing systems, including clinician notes, to help with medication reconciliation and to determine the risk of readmission.

Other

The National Bureau of Economics Research publishes a grant-supported book titled “The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: Health Care Challenges” that analyzes barriers – incentives, management, data availability, and regulation – that will impact the efficiency and cost disruptions that are possible in the 20% of the US economy that involves healthcare.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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