EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 4/16/26

People often ask me what I think of the different AI tools. I regularly use a host of them via both free and paid accounts.

I received an email the other day from Doximity that told me that the platform had “compiled year-over-year prescription data” in my area “to help discover meaningful trends in treatment.” Clicking the button took me to a preloaded search within DoxGPT that was based on the prompt, “Create a report highlighting trends in prescription treatment in my area versus nationally.” The preamble to the response noted that its goal is to highlight shifts in local practice patterns relative to national movement.

I have spent my professional career looking at data and assessing the validity of different kinds of evidence. I struggle to understand how this kind of information would be useful to me. It felt like AI for AI’s sake.

I don’t order labs or tests for patients unless the results could change how I manage them. I didn’t ask for this AI query and it’s not obvious what I should be doing with it, so why bother asking? Knowing which brands of GLP-1 drugs I’m prescribing relative to my peers isn’t helpful. Those decisions are usually driven by the patient’s insurance coverage.

The statistics that were presented didn’t give any indication as to their quality. One drug was down 83% locally versus 88% nationally, but without more information, I have no way of knowing whether this is a statistically significant change. Another drug was down 17% locally versus 16% nationally, which is meaningless.

A company thinking that I want this information tells me that they don’t understand their audience and don’t know what is valuable to a physician in my specialty. They monetized my click when I went to the site to view the content, and I knew that before I decided to take a look, but it’s just baffling that they serve this information to physicians who are strapped for time and cognitive bandwidth.

The CEO of NYC Health and Hospitals is under fire for comments that he made at a business conference. President and CEO Mitchell Katz stated, “We could replace a great deal of radiologists with AI at this moment, if we are ready to do the regulatory challenge.” He used the example of breast cancer screening, saying that radiologists should only weigh in when AI systems identify abnormal images.

As a physician, my first thought was that this person probably doesn’t understand concepts such as false-positives and false-negatives. The article also mentions the concept of an AI mirage, which goes beyond hallucinations and can bypass hallucination safeguards by providing rational explanations. 

Another panelist noted that his hospital is already using similar technology. He clarified that the system is being used for women who aren’t high risk, and even then, the false-negative rate is three out of 10,000. Published reports of his comments don’t mention what the false-negative rate is for human radiologists at the center.

A radiologist who is critical of the proposal, Mohammed Suhail, MD, said that the statements are “undeniable proof that confidently uninformed hospital administrators are a danger to patients… Hospitals are happy to cut costs even if it means patient harm, as long as it’s legal.”

The so-called mirage reasoning effect is discussed in a preprint journal article. Stanford University researchers describe AI models that created “detailed image descriptions and elaborate reasoning traces, including pathology-biased clinical findings, for images never provided.”

The authors believe that the AI models use their memory and language skills to hide their weaknesses. They note that they saw this  behavior in models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. It’s yet another example of how AI can be very convincingly wrong and why we need to remember that tools are not without risk.

The American Medical Informatics Association has joined the National Health Council as a Partner of Patient Organizations Member. The Council, which was founded in 1920, provides advocacy for the 200 million people who are living with chronic diseases and disabilities, along with their family caregivers. AMIA will share its research, policy, and clinical expertise to promote shared goals, including priorities in health equity, access, innovation, and artificial intelligence. AMIA will join 170 national organizations that support the Council.

As the conflict with Iran continues, one thing I didn’t have on my bingo card for the year is a disruption in the global helium supply that creates risk for healthcare organizations. Helium is used to cool the magnets that are found in MRI scanners and is also used for some laparoscopic and subspecialty surgical procedures. Production facilities in Qatar have been damaged and shipping has been disrupted.

The helium supply has been unstable for some time. Imaging vendors are developing low-helium scanners, but those aren’t widely used. I’m curious to hear from provider-side readers whether their organizations are discussing the issue and whether they are seeing gaps in the supply chain.

From Utterly Presumptuous: “Re: conferences that sell their attendee lists with no opt-out for marketing spam. I work for a healthcare-adjacent company and attend many of the health IT conferences. I received more than 20 emails requesting meetings at a recent conference. Some of them make assumptions that because I’m attending a health IT conference that I’m part of a provider organization. The most annoying one I received today started with, ‘Since your company is already using our services, X person at our organization wanted to meet you at the show.’ I own all the contracts, so I know for a fact that we are not doing business with them. Based on their tactics, I don’t see myself doing business with them in the future.”

I have worked with vendors who subscribe to the philosophy that being told no is still a response, but that doesn’t make these direct emails less annoying. I make liberal use of the “mark as junk” button in my email client, but I’m not sure that it reduces the volume. If others have tips, let me know.

Does it annoy you to receive emails that were created from conference attendee lists, or does your company see benefit from sending them? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.