🧠 Brain Slicing: Neural Clues?
Plus: Gates, Musk, and Zuck discuss AI regulations | Patients advance Meta lawsuit | Top 5 tech trends in 2024 | Walmart explores buying ChenMed
Sanjaya Nagahawatta
September 14, 2023
Good morning!
Welcome to Healthcare AI News, your weekly dose of the latest developments and headlines in the world of Healthcare AI.
In this issue, we explore:
✅ Headlines: At least 5 people have been cured of HIV
✅ Industry: Babylon Health’s CEO should spend time with Elizabeth Holmes
✅ Feature: Leading Countries In Healthcare AI
✅ Interesting Reads: Can we slice up a brain?
✅ Tech: Amazon uses chaos engineering to handle 84K+ requests/sec
✅ Venture Pipeline: Optum-Amedisys deal for $3.3b receives approval
Headline Roundup
AI companies, including Adobe and IBM, pledged to follow voluntary AI safety standards. This industry-led effort focuses on security and trust in AI. Amid rising concerns about AI, tech executives meet with lawmakers to discuss regulations. Some criticize the dominant role of tech companies in AI regulation talks.
Scientists have developed human-pig hybrid embryos, and when these embryos were implanted into pig surrogates, the resulting kidneys were found to be predominantly composed of human cells. This marks the inaugural instance of a substantially humanized organ being cultivated within a different species. However, these kidneys aren't fully human and, hence, aren't suitable for transplantation at this stage. Numerous legal and ethical hurdles remain before such research can be applied clinically.
HIV diagnoses in the US once had a short life expectancy, but today's infected individuals live as long as the general population due to antiretroviral therapy (ART). While ART suppresses HIV, discontinuation reactivates the virus. Efforts toward a cure include stem cell transplants, CRISPR gene-editing, and cancer drugs. Additionally, treatments ensuring easier HIV management and preventive measures are emerging, yet a universal cure remains elusive.
Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin developed an AI model that diagnoses knee osteoarthritis using x-ray images. Aiding, not replacing doctors, this tool can enhance early detection, track progression, and ultimately improve patient care.
Apple faces France's claim that the iPhone 12 exceeds European radiation limits. French regulators ordered a sales halt and fixes for sold phones, stating it's not EU-compliant. Apple contests these findings, providing lab results that demonstrate compliance. The World Health Organization suggests such exposures are not harmful below guidelines. Existing iPhone 12s might be recalled if not made compliant. Sales are paused in France.
Digital twins create realistic simulations using real-time data, assisting decision-making across sectors. Gaining traction in healthcare, these tools demand ethical data handling, especially concerning patient privacy. When deployed effectively, they can model assets like MRI machines, simulate community health impacts, or even train medical professionals on patient interactions, including honing empathy and communication skills. Ethical data practices, including consent and transparency, are vital.
AI in health care often prioritizes big data, overlooking crucial "small data" reflecting lived experiences and social determinants of health. This neglect perpetuates biases, hindering treatment efficacy. Diverse AI development teams, emphasizing holistic, lived-experience data, can address health disparities, ensuring equitable, effective care.
Johnson & Johnson is leveraging AI to enhance healthcare, from speeding up drug discovery to improving patient care. AI aids in early disease diagnosis, optimizing clinical trial processes, and refining supply chains. Additionally, AI-enhanced surgical videos offer medical professionals valuable insights, underscoring AI's potential in revolutionizing healthcare.
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INDUSTRY NEWS
Patients advance Meta lawsuit over collecting health information (Read More)
Babylon Health’s CEO should spend some time with Elizabeth Holmes (Read More)
Bain & KLAS: 80% of US healthcare providers boost IT spend, focus on AI (Read More)
FDA sends warning to CVS, Walgreens, and other companies over unapproved eye products (Read More)
Russians who deployed ransomware against hospitals are charged (Read More)
Smart pills can track key biological markers in real-time (Read More)
MRI reveals brain iron balance: Key to cancer & neuro disease risk (Read More)
World-first AI model can detect eye diseases and predict systemic health (Read More)
THE FEATURE
Leading Countries In Healthcare AI
No, it’s not just the US. These countries are leading in healthcare AI.
The frontlines of healthcare AI innovation? That’s not just Silicon Valley and NYC—but you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
Too much English-language media covers solely the American AI revolution.
The American tech scene—particularly healthcare innovation—is incredibly exciting and well-funded. However, American health technology isn’t representative of the rest of the world.
Just like our healthcare system, the American healthcare AI context is particular. We’ve got…
Private insurance
State and federal governance
A lack of broad AI regulation (for now)
Other medical AI leaders bring different cultural, government, and scientific realities that give them an edge—or make it harder for them to compete.
To truly understand the beast that is healthcare AI, we must address our blind spots.
Join us as we highlight a few of the world’s leading countries and what their respective healthcare AI scenes look like, starting with a familiar one…
First up: the United States
There are many clear indicators of America’s advantage in the healthcare AI arena:
The U.S. has been leading in AI-related medical research publications for many years.
American Big Tech’s biotech arms are beginning to implement AI.
Leading healthcare software vendors like Epic are rolling out patient-facing generative AI.
But American healthcare AI’s weakness? The pressure of self-governance.
As the U.S. government continues to delay medical AI regulation, innovators are being forced to set ethical standards on the fly.
Some of the big players—like Google—are pushing back against draft regulation that would require disclosing how algorithms are designed. At the same time, other AI corporate leaders—even OpenAI’s own CEO—are hoping regulators will hurry up and make the rules already.
The leader in healthcare AI adoption: China
Unlike in the U.S., public users in China can’t access generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT. But this hasn’t stopped China’s tech industry from capitalizing on AI advancements.
In the Chinese healthcare system, healthcare AI adoption far outpaces that of the U.S.
The big reason for this difference? The availability of high-quality data.
In comparison, the U.S. healthcare system is fragmented by states and private entities. And while we’ve made big strides in data sharing and EHR interoperability, we’re nowhere near where China is on the availability of complete, standardized patient data from entire provinces.
If you’ve followed Beijing’s tech crackdowns, you might be tempted to argue: Innovators in the medical AI space are constrained.
Yes, Chinese health AI innovators may be more careful than their counterparts elsewhere with respect to security and accuracy. However, they’re also forced to be more strategic in the solutions they develop. Leading to potentially more sustainable growth down the line.
Europe’s medical AI giant: Germany
The EU market is another ripe arena for medical AI innovation. And Germany is one of its strongest sources of exciting and widely-adopted solutions. One of our favorite examples is Ada Health, an AI-powered symptom assessment tool that has been compared to WebMD.
When it comes to medical AI in Germany (and the EU), regulation is the big question on everyone's lips (we’re sensing a pattern here). In this case, the EU’s proposed Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) is the law in question.
Is this upcoming regulation going to stifle German healthcare AI innovation? Some may argue that, like in China, developers might need to slow down and temper their ambitions. However, we’d argue that this regulation is a marker of what gives German medical AI an advantage on the world stage.
Don’t forget: Germany and other EU countries are pros at accommodating both national and international regulations (GDPR, anyone?) Plus, analysts are pointing out that EU-wide AI regulation may become a model for the rest of the world. And countries like Germany stand to benefit from being used to that compliance.
Final thoughts from HAIN (and some honorable mentions)
Don’t get us wrong. These are not the only top players in global healthcare AI development.
If we had all day, we’d tell you all about the amazing work being done by scientists and innovators in other countries, such as:
Singapore, which established a national AI strategy and ethics board as early as 2017
Japan, which has embraced the power of medical AI to address provider shortages
Sweden, which has national open healthcare data and a government initiative for information-driven healthcare supporting the development of medical AI solutions.
Beyond our breakdowns of what makes these countries leaders in this space, we hope, if you take away one thing from this feature, it’s this. We must be global-minded when we discuss healthcare AI as a field.
Our neighbors aren’t just our competition: They’re our inspirations—and cautionary tales.
So, who did we miss? We can’t cover them all, but we’d love to know who else we should be watching.
Reply and let us know which other countries are making strides in healthcare AI.
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INTERESTING READS
TECH NEWS
VENTURE PIPELINE
Optum-Amedisys deal for $3.3B receives approval (Read More)
Walmart explores buying a majority stake in ChenMed (Read More)
Bold secures $17M for Medicare members' healthy aging platform expansion. (Read More)
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