Recent news and commentary covering technology in U.S. healthcare

Smarter health: How AI is transforming health care

“I think the potential for AI and health care is huge. I think it can improve a lot of decisions, but I think there are also a lot of risks. And I think I’ve studied some of those, the risks are including but not limited to racial biases, and other kinds of problems that can be scaled up by algorithms. So it’s an incredibly difficult area with tradeoffs. And I think we all need to understand them, and be informed so we can make those tradeoffs together.”

(Dr. Ziad Obermeyer, associate professor of health policy and management at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health on WBUR — May 2022)

Immersion in innovation should be part of every health care professional’s training

“Health care innovation saves lives: New diagnostic methods, therapeutics, devices, and methods are an engine for keeping people healthy, treating their illnesses, improving their quality of life, and preventing them from dying prematurely. Medical schools and health care institutions must do everything in their power to sustain innovation, keep it running, and democratize the process.”

(STAT — May 2022)

No low-hanging fruit: Experts pitch their four big ideas for changing health care

“Every hospital should have an arm dedicated to digital health. Those teams of in-hospital data experts, as well as doctors, should be working with companies to change health care.

“‘All of this stuff that’s happening out there in the VC world, in the startup world, and at Google, and all of that is fantastic. But you’re gonna have to interact with us. And part of that is on you. Part of that is on us. We have to reorganize ourselves in order to be innovative in the digital world.'”

(STAT — May 2022)

Harris, Murthy to outline recommendations to address health worker burnout

“The recommendations in the surgeon general’s advisory released Monday include eliminating punitive policies for seeking mental health and substance abuse care; ensuring adequate staffing, particularly during public health emergencies; increasing time spent with patients instead of on administrative work; and encouraging health care workers to speak out about their issues.”

(The Hill — May 2022)

Pollution caused 1 in 6 deaths globally for five years, study says

“The analysis … found that air pollution accounts for the vast majority of premature deaths, at 6.7 million. … In the past, most pollution deaths stemmed from indoor and household air pollution, caused by fine particles of soot released from indoor stoves burning wood or dung. … [T]his source of pollution has decreased in recent years, as many households in China and India have switched to gas for cooking. … Instead of those traditional pollutants, fossil fuel burning, automobile combustion and toxic chemical pollution now pose a greater health risk in the developing world.”

(The Washington Post — May 2022)

Prediction of future healthcare expenses of patients from chest radiographs using deep learning: a pilot study

“We demonstrated the potential of deep learning algorithms to predict 1,3, and 5-years patient healthcare expenditure based on a frontal chest radiograph even in the absence of additional clinical information. This study confirms that radiological imaging indeed contains rich information that may not be routinely extracted by human radiologists but can be analyzed by the power of big data and deep learning. Successfully predicting healthcare expenditure can potentially be an important first step towards improving health policy and medical interventions to address patient care and societal costs.”

(Nature — May 2022)