Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Reining In Dreams Of Robot Doctors: AI In Medicine Becomes More About Helping Than Replacing Professionals
Modern Healthcare: Realizing AI: Artificial Intelligence In Healthcare Makes Slow Impact
The promise of AI to do just that—by augmenting human activities, not replacing them—is real. It may one day help physicians with diagnoses, guiding them rather than dictating. “We are not looking for robots to do work for us,” said Manu Tandon, chief information officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “We are looking to make better decisions by benefiting from machine learning and AI.”How quickly and successfully AI gets there depends on clinical knowledge. It also depends on funding and on the risks that health systems are willing to take to try out services that haven’t been validated by the market. (Arndt, 3/2)
Modern Healthcare: Population Health Management Could See Wins From AI, Machine Learning
Improving 30-day readmission rates, flagging patients at risk, shortening hospital stays and mitigating disease risk are just some of issues AI is helping hospitals currently address, said Brian Kalis, managing director of digital health and innovation for consulting firm Accenture.But the technology could also help providers improve patient engagement.AI can help patients self-manage their conditions at home and skip in-office doctor visits. (Johnson, 3/2)
In other health and technology news —
NPR: Personal Health Technology Is Getting Smarter
With sensors that can collect data on body movements, heart rate, blood pressure and other metrics, the list of health trackers that go beyond activity trackers like Fitbits gets longer each year. "There's definitely an explosion of these things," says Dr. Joseph Kvedar, the vice president for connected health at Partners HealthCare in Boston, and an associate professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School. (Chen, 3/5)
The New York Times: Consent In The Digital Age: Can Apps Solve A Very Human Problem?
“No means no” began to give way to “yes means yes” as the credo of sexual consent decades ago, but the shift has been swiftly propelled in recent years by legislation and, most recently, by the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. The concept of affirmative consent — the act of giving verbal permission clearly and often during intimate encounters — was pioneered at Antioch College, where an affirmative sexual consent policy was instituted in 1990. It was widely mocked then, but similar policies have since spread to campuses nationwide, and today, the concept is acknowledged well beyond university grounds. (Salam, 3/2)
