Healthcare AI News 12/18/24

News

The House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence publishes its findings and recommendations, which include:

• Challenges include data availability and quality, incomplete or inaccurate responses, non-individualized recommendations, lack of decision transparency, data privacy, interoperability with existing systems, liability for AI-contributed errors, biased decision making, and deployment for financial gain rather than patient care.
• AI can help improve the percentage of drugs that are eventually approved by FDA by streamlining study design, finding study patients, and answering patient questions.
• AI can assist radiologists by performing first-pass image screening, cleaning up images, and applying consistent interpretation criteria across all patients and locations.
• Clinical decision support can be tailored to an individual patient’s symptoms and medical history and can compare their data to the medical literature or a “patients like this one” model.
• AI can use population health data to predict response to initiatives among population groups.
• Physician burnout can be reduced by deploying AI-assisted clinical documentation.
• AI can reduce the administrative burden of the prior authorization process.
• CMS will need to evaluate Medicare payment for algorithms and other AI tools.
• AI has potential in medical management, but could create unnecessary denials.
• Innovation will require standardization of EHR-specific data formats to be applicable to broader populations and for AI training.
• HIPAA may require updating to meet the challenges of provider AI deployment.

Principal Deputy ASTP/National Coordinator Steven Posnack, MS, MHS says that healthcare AI should not be strictly regulated since it is constantly changing and because risk tolerance varies by setting, such as back office support versus patient care versus research.

A technology reporter shares five weeks of her Apple Health information with ChatGPT and finds that with no prompting, it analyzes trends and makes personalized suggestions for improvement, weaving seemingly unrelated statistics into a fitness journey story.

OpenAI makes the ChatGPT search function available to free users (it was previously available only to paying users) and adds voice-integrated search.

ASTP publishes a downloadable inventory of HHS AI use cases, documenting 66% more than a year ago.

Business

Company insiders say that most of the work of EvenUp — which calculates the value of a personal injury case by analyzing customer medical records and case files — is performed by humans rather than the AI that the company touts to investors. Former employees of the startup, which is valued at $1 billion, say that the AI system misses injuries, hallucinates medical conditions, and is not reliable in analyzing doctor visits, leading managers to tell employees not to use it.

Other

Google Cloud’s healthcare solutions director Aashima Gupta, MS predicts the short-term use of AI to be focused on routine tasks such as appointment scheduling and processing forms, clinical documentation, communication, claims processing, marketing outreach, and use of AI agents for member and provider communications. She expects longer-term AI uses to include enhanced access, enhanced imaging screening and early detection, use of AI as a health concierge, multilingual support, medication reminders, and care navigation advice.

The UK’s National Health Service is using AI to identify patients who are at risk for high usage of emergency services, who are then offered coaching and in-home support.

Contacts

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