Large language models are transforming medicine—but the technology comes with side effects. “Surveys have suggested that many people are more confident in A.I. diagnoses than in those rendered by professionals. Meanwhile, in the United States alone, misdiagnosis disables hundreds of thousands of people each year; autopsy studies suggest that it contributes to perhaps one in every ten deaths. [..] One recent study found that OpenAI’s GPT-4 answered open-ended medical questions incorrectly about two-thirds of the time. In another, GPT-3.5 misdiagnosed more than eighty per cent of complex pediatric cases. Meanwhile, leading large language models have become much less likely to … Read More
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“The FDA [United States Food and Drug Administration] follows the least burdensome principle, limiting its ability to require cybersecurity testing beyond what is necessary to demonstrate safety and effectiveness. As a result, hospitals incur risks of insecure devices with limited mechanism to hold manufacturers accountable. A recent FDA advisory and subsequent congressional testimony have underscored these concerns, raising urgent questions about whether current regulatory pathways are sufficient or in need of modernization. On January 30, 2025, the FDA issued a safety advisory on the Contec CMS8000 patient monitor, identifying vulnerabilities in its security protocols. These devices collect information from pulse … Read More
Besides being launched by Amazon alumni, General Medicine has close business ties to a senior Amazon health exec Excerpt – A new digital health care marketplace, launched last week, has a good amount of Amazon in its DNA. General Medicine, with $32 million in funding, came out of stealth with three former Amazon employees as co-founders and investors, a business model that could compete with Amazon’s One Medical — and behind the scenes, a current senior Amazon executive. The former employees, including the founders of PillPack — the pharmacy company that Amazon bought in 2018 for about $750 million and … Read More
Results could help build case for insurance coverage for prescription digital therapeutics “In a new report, the Peterson Health Technology Institute (PHTI) finds that Rejoyn, an app for depression from Otsuka Precision Health, and DaylightRx, an app for anxiety from Big Health, warrant further adoption because their clinical trials show strong evidence of benefits. Both apps are intended to be used alongside ongoing mental health treatment, and in most cases, the institute found the apps will save money. PHTI was founded in 2023 with $50 million to conduct independent evaluations of health technology. Its findings, both positive and negative, have ruffled feathers in the industry, and have … Read More
“A wave of new ventures is no doubt poised to deliver fresh possibilities in DTC [direct-to-consumer] health care. However, Big Tech is uniquely positioned to scale their own DTC health care services rapidly and efficiently or can choose to provide the technological backbone for traditional HCOs [health care organizations] or new entrant startups. Big Tech platforms have hundreds of millions of users and access to hyperpersonalized data from search, social media interactions, mobility data, and LLM [large language model] engagement. Google Search has long been a de facto patient decision support tool for diagnosis and more, well before being tuned … Read More
“The process of extracting systemic health insights by analyzing ocular data, including retinal images with AI, is referred to as oculomics. We define prescreening as a preliminary assessment of disease or potential disease in asymptomatic individuals. Healthcare From the Eye (Topcon Healthcare Inc) prescreening is utilization of retinal images to identify ocular or systemic disease or potential disease in asymptomatic individuals in a coordinated care system that includes eye care professionals (ECPs), primary care professionals (PCPs), and specialty care professionals using secure and responsible technology. It offers the potential for rapid, cost-effective, and accessible prescreening for a wide range of devastating diseases. Such … Read More
“[Abstract] Efficacy of digital health (d-Health) interventions on workers’ physical activity (PA), sedentary behavior, and physiological outcomes remains unclear. This umbrella review searched PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar up to October 25, 2024. We identified 24 systematic reviews (SRs) and selected 130 individual studies from these SRs for analysis. The AMSTAR 2 tool rated the quality of most SRs as critically low. Narrative syntheses suggested that d-Health interventions could potentially improve all outcomes compared with no intervention. However, whether d-Health interventions outperform non-d-Health interventions remains uncertain. Meta-analyses showed a significantly small effect of d-Health interventions on step counts, sedentary/sitting … Read More
“We identified all DHTs [digital health technologies] prescribable for a hypothetical patient with 5 chronic conditions (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease [COPD], osteoporosis, and osteoarthritis), and assessed the number of DHTs this patient should be prescribed to receive benefits from functions health professionals considered important. We chose to evaluate devices involving hardware and standalone apps together to reflect patients’ perspective, as patients would have to cope with tasks from all DHTs, regardless their nature. [..] We defined DHTs as all software as a medical device (SaMD); implanted, wearable, external, or environmental medical devices driven by software; and … Read More
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
“On April 5, 2021, a landmark change in health care occurred: the 21st Century Cures Act, known as the Cures Rule, took effect, requiring clinicians to give patients real-time access to their health data via patient portals. This was intended to empower patients by granting access to their medical information, enabling them to take an active role in their care, and ultimately improving health outcomes. However, as with many policy changes, the reality has proven more complicated. While the shift aimed to democratize health care information, its consequences—both for patients and clinicians—are more nuanced than anticipated. The promise of transparency … Read More