“most people don’t simply want to live until 110. They want to extend the amount of time they live free of serious disease, a concept known as health span. That’s why the most sensible approach is to reduce the toll of three major age-related diseases: cancer, heart disease and neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease. It may be less flashy, but it’s more attainable than ever. It’s estimated that at least 80 percent of cardiovascular disease cases, 40 percent of cancer cases and 45 percent of Alzheimer’s cases are preventable. Even with a long lag — these diseases can each … Read More
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The Luddites lost the fight to save their livelihoods. As the threat of artificial intelligence looms, can we do any better? Excerpt – The Luddites rejected the moral and political authority of a system that had abandoned long-held principles of fairness, quality, and mutual obligation. Under feudalism and mercantile capitalism, Britain’s rigid class structure placed the gentry at the top, merchants and professionals (such as doctors, parsons, and lawyers) in the middle, and the vast majority in the “lower orders.” Yet this social hierarchy was accompanied by labor-market regulations—both formal and informal—that provided some measure of reciprocity. Skilled trades were … Read More
“Primary care doctors now spend, on average, two hours a day filling out patients’ electronic health records. From 2009 to 2018, EHR length has increased by 60 percent. And yet most of this work is simply documentation, not problem-solving or reasoning. Why take doctors away from their patients or hire other teams of humans, like medical scribes, to transcribe and enter all this data, when AI can now do it instead? [..] they listen in on the conversation between a patient and physician, create a transcript, then organize the information from the transcript into the standard format doctors use, generating … Read More
“Opioid overdose continues to be the leading cause of death due to injury in the US. Recent data from the Drug Abuse Warning Network estimated 882 000 emergency department (ED) opioid-related visits in 2023, a rate of 263 per 100 000 visits, with the highest rates among Black individuals (425 per 100 000). Access to treatment with medications for opioid use disorder, specifically buprenorphine, continues to be challenging for patients in active addiction, and these disparities by race are widening. [..] In many states, rural patients with opioid use disorder have worse outcomes than urban patients. Rural hospitals are also less likely to … Read More
“Akido Labs is using artificial intelligence to bring medical care to the streets of New York. The Los Angeles-based healthcare provider has created an AI doctor that suggests diagnoses and treatments based on patients’ symptoms and medical histories. A human doctor approves, modifies or rejects the recommendations. Now Akido is bringing this technology, ScopeAI, to ride-share drivers in New York through a partnership with two groups that can help it connect with these workers: the Independent Drivers Guild, an advocacy group, and Workers Benefit Fund, which works with labor unions and policy leaders to provide health and other benefits to … Read More
JAMA interviewed Sarah C Hull, associate director of the biomedical ethics program at Yale. “[JAMA] [..] What are the biggest moral dilemmas that you think we’re facing with AI [artificial intelligence], especially within this area? [Hull] I think that we need to be very careful when deploying tools that act human vs tools that are decidedly not human acting. I think that ethically, it can become a lot more complex when you have really advanced generative AI that can seem very humanoid, but very importantly does not possess moral agency and does not have a fiduciary responsibility for the well-being … Read More
“[Data analytics company Embold Health chief executive officer Daniel Stein:] In the larger health care policy discussions, Medicare and Medicaid and other government programs get a lot of attention. But as you noted, most working Americans get their coverage through their employer. All in, about 165 million Americans are getting coverage through their employer. It’s a tough job to provide health coverage for your employees. Not only do you have to worry about things like cost and quality, the usual types of pressures that a purchaser has, but coming through this global [Covid-19] pandemic, employers were focused for a long … Read More
“The lack of palliative care resources and shifting patient needs due to improvements in cancer therapeutics highlight the need for less resource-intensive and more patient-centered palliative care models. Moreover, the historical model of a referral system that relies on oncologists to identify patients with cancer who may benefit from early palliative care remains inadequate. [..] In stepped care, all patients receive care for their condition, but with a minimum of required contact with a specialty-trained clinician. More intensive treatment with the clinician is reserved for patients who do not benefit sufficiently from the less intensive therapies. A key element of … Read More
Excerpt – For a growing number of doctors, A.I. chatbots — which can draft letters to insurers in seconds — are opening up a new front in the battle to approve costly claims, accomplishing in minutes what years of advocacy and attempts at health care reform have not. [..] Doctors are turning to the technology even as some of the country’s largest insurance companies face class-action lawsuits alleging that they used their own technology to swiftly deny large batches of claims and cut off seriously ill patients from rehabilitation treatment. Some experts fear that the prior-authorization process will soon devolve … Read More
“In January 2024, the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly launched LillyDirect, a service that includes a direct-to-consumer pharmacy and a referral network of in-person and telehealth clinicians. These tools are intended to add new options for patients to access the company’s drugs, including its newly approved antiobesity drug tirzepatide (Zepbound). [..] LillyDirect is similar to several pharmacies that cut out insurers and PBMs [pharmacy benefit managers] and allow patients to purchase drugs at discounted cash prices. These include pharmacies introduced by major retail companies like Walmart, Costco, and Amazon, and independent pharmacies like the one named for its billionaire cofounder Mark … Read More