Healthcare AI News 1/31/24

News

Oracle announces a generative AI service that supports text generation, text summarization, and LLM-contextualized search results. The company says it will release search, aggregation tools, and prebuilt agent actions across its SaaS applications, including those of Oracle Health.

Apple will reportedly release AI features with IOS 18 in June, reportedly including enhancing Messages to answer questions and auto-complete sentences.

The State of Illinois launches a Google AI-powered portal for families to access behavioral and mental health resources.

In UAE, Emirates Health Services launches an AI-powered virtual nurse that answers patient questions, provides medical advice, and helps with assessment and triage. EHS will also assess patient-reported symptoms to schedule appointments with the correct specialty. EHS is running a long list of AI projects, including those related to diagnosis, treatment, disease prediction, patient monitoring, and speech-powered clinical documentation.

Microsoft and Google warn investors that the arms race to develop AI products will be expensive due to the computing power it requires.

Business

The Justice Department is reportedly issuing subpoenas to drug companies and EHR vendors to determine if AI is being used to influence prescribing in ways that breach anti-kickback and false claims violations

Microsoft and OpenAI are reportedly in talks to invest up to $500 million in AI-powered robot developer Figure AI, which could value the 2022 startup at $2 billion. The latest autonomous model is 5’6” tall, can carry 44 pounds, walks at 1.2 meters per second, and operates for five hours when charged.

Research

Researchers apply AI and sophisticated analytics methods to test the detection of Medicare fraud, noting that traditional auditors only have enough time to look for specific suspicious patterns.

Other

Cleveland Clinic says in its annual meeting that it is piloting AI for answering the questions of patients with chronic disease, creating ambient clinical documentation, predicting patient volume, and creating draft responses to questions that are submitted via Epic’s MyChart.

The hottest job in corporate America is the executive in charge of AI, according to the New York Times. It notes that Mayo Clinic in Arizona has hired its first chief artificial intelligence officer. 

An AAMC story describes the experience of physicians who are using AI to create documentation from recordings of their patient encounters. Eric Poon, MD, MPH (Duke Primary Care) says he is finishing his clinical schedule on time for the first time in his life, also noting that he didn’t realize how his EHR typing was slowing down the visit. Matthew Anderson, MD (Atrium Health) says he has a summarydraft in his hand 15 seconds after the visit ends. However, users say that ambient listening tools aren’t perfect in deciding what parts of the conversation to include or exclude, and some of them report that they spend quite a bit of time editing out extraneous information. They also say that it works well for quick visits, but less so when visits involve multiple medical issues.

Contacts

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