Monday Morning Update 6/5/23
Top News
The National Eating Disorder Association shuts down its chatbot after users report that it gave them inappropriate advice for managing eating disorders, such as advising them to diet.
The association closed its human-staffed help line in May 2023, a few days after its employees unionized. Help line employees and volunteers fielded 70,000 calls per year.
The medical school team that created the chabot says it was never intended to be a replacement for the help line. They also suspect that the organization introduced bugs in trying to make the chatbot look like ChatGPT even though it is a rules-bases system that can’t generate unique responses.
Reader Comments
From Smidge: “Re: HIE. I saw a new doctor who downloaded my health and demographic information from an HIE and some of it was outdated or truncated. I’m wondering if others have seen this. It may have been caused by another provider’s system merge.”
From Another Dave: “Re: Scanadu Scout. Remember that? Mine still works on those occasions where I find it in my drawer of broken dreams. This one might make it to the marketplace.” Scanadu’s so-called Tricorder system died in a big cloud of hype dust when it gave up on bringing the Scout to market in mid-2017. Meanwhile, smartphones are slowly adding Scout-like technologies, and UCSD engineers have developed a 10-cent phone clip that allows measuring blood pressure using the phone’s camera and flash.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
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Webinars
None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
India-based Apollo Hospitals will sell a 6% stake in its online platform for $200 million, valuing the business at up to $3 billion. Apollo HealthCo was launched in June 2021, merging the company’s digital health and telehealth products with the intention of raising investor capital to expand.
Sales
- Belgian hospitals AZ Sint Jan and AZ Sint Lucas select Sectra One Cloud for enterprise imaging.
Privacy and Security
Molecular diagnostic company Enso Biochem announces via an SEC filing that the clinical test information of 2.5 million people was exposed in an April 2023 ransomware attack.
Other
Microsoft researchers train a GPT-4 model using a PubMed Central dataset extract of diagnostic images and their captions to inexpensively create a conversational assistant for biomedicine in one day.
Cancer screening company Grail blames third-party telemedicine vendor PWNHealth for sending 400 people letters inappropriately warning them that they may have cancer.
South Australia Health has failed to deliver on its promise of implementing a crucial result tracking and notification feature within its Altera Digital Health Sunrise EHR system, three years after the death of a patient whose adenocarcinoma diagnosis was delayed by three months. SA Health says a Sunrise upgrade later this year is required before introducing Compass, a task tracking function that reminds doctors when they don’t review test results promptly.
Where would you start if you were CEO of this major ambulatory EHR vendor as profiled in a new KLAS report?
Sponsor Updates
- Be Well Primary Care (TX) transitions to EClinicalWorks V12.
- Azara Health publishes a new resource and strategy guide, “Leveraging Social Drivers of Health Data to Promote Health Equity Advancement.”
- AvaSure adds AI enhancements to its TeleSitter virtual care platform, including augmented alerts for patient falls and elopement, and predictive fall risk identification.
- NeuroFlow publishes a new whitepaper, “Navigating the Integrated Behavioral Health Landscape: A Roadmap for Providers and Organizations.”
- Orbita will present at the Healthcare Contact Center Conference taking place June 7-9 in Atlanta.
- Nuance publishes a new case study, “DAX expands access to care at WellSpan Health.”
- Wolters Kluwer Health partners with Ariadne Labs and its Better Evidence program to donate over 100,000 UpToDate subscriptions.
Blog Posts
- Effective HCP engagement: Timely, Relevant, and Personalized (OptimizeRx)
- Optimizing the Transfer and Call Centers – Methodist Le Bonheur + Call Center (PerfectServe)
- Premier Survey Reveals Key Insights on Workplace Violence Incidents in Healthcare* (Premier)
- How Does Your Access Center Measure Up? (Tegria)
- What healthcare gets wrong about patient engagement (Hint: Sending a text message isn’t enough.) (Upfront Healthcare)
- Delivering better patient financial care: 3 takeaways from Renown Health’s success (Waystar)
- FAQ: Double Your Reach: Marketing Hacks for Inside and Outside Your Practice (WebPT)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Very disappointing for the AI /CTO/digital employees at HHS. They could have quintupled their salaries in the private sector and…