Healthcare AI News 3/22/23

Reader Note

This is my first weekly healthcare AI news recap, and as such is a work in progress as I learn on the job. I need advice about the topics that interest you, how you would like to see items laid out, and suggestions of individual experts and companies that you follow for healthcare AI news. I’m also interested in interviewing experts. Let me know.

News

Google releases its Bard chatbot to a limited number of users. I got early access and it has a long way to go to catch up even to ChatGPT 3.5, much less GPT-4.

Google is using its Duplex automated calling to contact US healthcare providers to see if their information is correct and to find out if they accept Medicaid, both with the intention of updating Google search results.

Medical device manufacturer Medtronic will incorporate Nvidia’s AI technology into its AI-assisted colonoscopy tool.

Microsoft offers a preview of GPT-4 for customers of its Azure OpenAI Service.

PNC’s treasury management launches PNC Claim Predictor, an AI-powered tool that learns from previously submitted claims to identify future claims that are likely to be rejected. The system integrates with EHRs, including Epic.

The Wall Street Journal looks at startups that are offering AI for healthcare use:

• Abridge AI, which is being implemented at University of Kansas Health System, creates visit summaries from the recorded audio from a visit.
• Syntegra creates validated synthetic patient data that can be used for research when available patient data is limited or when privacy laws limit its use.
• Atropos Health analyzes available anonymized patient records to product observational research.

OpenAI CTO Mira Murati joins the board of Unlearn, which uses AI-generated digital twins of individual patients for work with clinical trials and precision medicine.

Ommyx launches an AI health tracking app and a $15 per month service that integrates data from wearables and sends recommendations about nutrition, activity, and sleep to the user’s calendar.

Pangaea, whose AI technology characterizes patient disease trajectories, predicts the length of stay and morality risk of ICU patients with 85% accuracy. The company says its technology discovers undiagnosed and misdiagnosed patients, reduces treatment costs, and gives drug companies access to provider data in a privacy compliant manner.

France-based startup Nabla announces GPT-3 powered Copilot, a digital assistant that transcribes information from video conversations and generates prescriptions, appointment letters, and visit summary. The tool will initially be provided as a Chrome browser extension and an in-person version will be released soon. The company also sells a tool for patient engagement and secure messaging, video consults, and scheduling, all of which include machine learning.

Research

Researchers find that ChatGPT does a good job explaining myths and misperceptions about cancer, creating summaries that are not noticeably different or less readable than the National Cancer Institute’s answers. The authors conclude that AI chatbots could be useful for people who are seeking cancer information online.

Opinion

Doctors are skeptical that they can trust AI systems that have been trained to think like experts in situations where no single right answer exists, Politico reports. The federal government is pairing AI with expert humans to figure out how they reason on the battlefield or in natural disasters. They are following the model of medical imaging analysis, where AI is defined as successful if its conclusions fall within the boundaries of those offered by radiologists who don’t necessarily agree with each other.

Bill Gates says that AI will be the most important advance in technology since the graphical user interface. He predicts widespread use of Microsoft’s co-pilot technology in Office, controlling computers by writing plain English requests instead of pointing and clicking, and using AI as a personal agent to manage emails and appointments. He foresees AI’s impact on healthcare as helping its workers with repetitive tasks, and in countries with too few doctors, helping patients with basic triage and advice.

An interesting article says that generative AI could fuel a better, more entrepreneurial business model than the Internet’s advertising-obsessed “attention economy” that has killed off newspapers and online content sources.

Resources and Tools

Are you regularly using AI-related tools for work or for personal use? Let me know and I’ll list them here. These aren’t necessarily healthcare related, just interesting uses of AI.

• PromptPal – user-created prompts for ChatGPT and other services.
• Supernormal – records and transcribes Zoom meetings to create notes.
• Engage AI – analyzes the voice characteristics of contact center conversations in real time to give agents suggestions to improve their call quality.
• Futurenda – plans and tracks tasks and time usage.
• Whisper Memos – transcribes recorded phone messages.
• Descript – video editing, podcasting, transcription, and AI voices that can be used for team communication.
• Dall-E 2 – create images from text.
• Branmark – create business logos from text descriptions.
• Synthesia – create videos from text that feature lifelike avatars and 120 language options.
• SlidesAI – create Google Slides from text.
• Yippity – create text or websites into quizzes and flashcards.
• Otter – takes online meeting notes, creates summaries, and auto-join and record meetings from your calendar entry in case you’re late.

Contacts

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