☀️ Neuralink Seeks Participants

Plus: Elmo does wellness checks and gets an earful

Author

Kaushee Ganeshan
February 01, 2024

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Welcome to your briefing:

  • AI ROUNDUP: Watch Neuralinks clinical trial video

  • INDUSTRY ROUNDUP: Elmo asked people online how they were doing. He got an earful

  • INTERESTING READS: How dry January affects your health

  • INSIGHTS CORNER: Accuracy of a Vision-Language Model on challenging medical cases

  • TRIVIA: In 1967, Marvin Minsky, a prominent US computer scientist and AI pioneer, made a bold prediction about when the challenge of creating AI would be substantially solved. What was his forecast?

AI ROUNDUP

WATCH THIS… 👇

Elon Musk's Neuralink is conducting the PRIME Study, seeking people with quadriplegia to test a brain-computer interface (BCI).

This technology uses an implant called N1, a robot named R1, and a user app to help control computers using brain signals.

Eligible participants will be compensated for study-related costs. The study spans six years and involves 9 clinic visits, regular BCI research sessions, and long-term follow-up.

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Ok… Now Back To AI Roundup

  • OpenAI's Initiative: Developing an early warning system for potential biological threats aided by LLM’s (Read More)

  • Apple’s fight over watch patents could slow its health ambitions (Read More)

  • AI is raising stakes for plastic surgery (Read More)

  • Cedars-Sinai launches groundbreaking AI and VR program for mental health (Read More)

  • Davos 2024: Six takeaways on the AI conversation at WEF (Read More)

  • Illinois partners with Google AI to streamline children’s behavioral health services (Read More)

  • House lawmakers warn VA officials about data privacy risks for veterans posed by AI (Read More)

  • New AI technique significantly boosts Medicare fraud detection (Read More)

INDUSTRY ROUNDUP

  • Elmo asked people online how they were doing. He got an earful (Read More)

  • Ketamine therapy for mental health a wild west for doctors and patients (Read More)

  • The VA can protect women’s spaces and transgender vets — here’s how (Read More)

  • Cigna sells Medicare business to Health Care Service for $3.3B (Read More)

  • Healthcare administrative spending increased by 50% (Read More)

  • Few Americans say they know how much health care will cost (Read More)

INTERESTING READS

  • A scientific breakthrough has unveiled the ancient source of our pain (Read More)

  • How dry January affects your health (Read More)

  • Hungry gut vs. hungry brain: Test could help decide who gets obesity drugs (Read More)

INSIGHTS CORNER

#1 - Accuracy of a Vision-Language Model on challenging medical cases

In an in-depth analysis spearheaded by Thomas Buckley, James A. Diao, Adam Rodman, and Arjun K. Manrai, the role of the GPT-4 with Vision (GPT-4V) model in medical diagnostics was put to the test.

Key Findings:

  • Impressive Accuracy: GPT-4V achieved an impressive 61% accuracy in medical diagnostics, surpassing human respondents who scored 49%.

  • Context Matters: The study revealed that GPT-4V's performance is context-dependent. It excelled with longer, informative text captions but faced challenges when analyzing images alongside comprehensive text.

  • Consistent Superiority: GPT-4V consistently outperformed humans across different difficulty levels, skin tones, and image types, with the exception of radiographic images.

  • Clinical Usefulness: In clinical conferences, GPT-4V included the correct diagnosis in its differential for 80% of cases when using text alone, compared to 58% when using both images and text.

Significance:

These findings emphasize the potential of AI, exemplified by GPT-4V, in revolutionizing medical diagnostics. While its exceptional accuracy is promising, the critical takeaway is that context plays a vital role in determining its effectiveness. Healthcare professionals should consider this when integrating AI into diagnostics, recognizing the impact of context on AI's performance.

#2 - The Facts About Medicare Spending

Medicare's Role and Spending Growth

Medicare, vital for over 65 million Americans, is facing significant financial challenges as it accounts for a growing portion of the U.S. healthcare budget. From 2000 to 2022, its spending escalated from under $200 billion to $744 billion, with per-person costs rising sharply.

This trend is driven by the aging population and increasing healthcare costs. A major concern is the solvency of Medicare's Hospital Insurance (Part A) Trust Fund, projected to be depleted in less than a decade without policy reform. This impending issue highlights the urgent need for sustainable solutions to secure Medicare's future.

Challenges and Trends

Simultaneously, there's a noticeable shift towards Medicare Advantage plans, now accounting for half of Medicare's total spending. While these plans offer additional benefits, they raise questions about cost efficiency and long-term viability. Beneficiaries are also experiencing higher out-of-pocket costs, with premiums and deductibles consuming a larger share of the average Social Security benefit.

Addressing these challenges requires careful policy considerations, including potential reforms in payment structures, benefit designs, and healthcare delivery models, to balance the needs of beneficiaries with the program's financial health.

#3- Trend: RPA Adoption: 74% of Hospitals Automate Revenue Cycle Tasks

AKASA sumary

A recent survey by AKASA, a prominent developer of AI-powered solutions, unveils a significant trend: 74% of healthcare organizations are currently automating aspects of their revenue cycle operations, with 46% of them incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into the mix.

Even more striking, 80% of those not yet utilizing automation plan to do so by the close of 2025. This underscores the growing importance of automation and AI in streamlining processes, reducing costs, and enhancing financial performance within the healthcare sector​

AI TRIVIA

HEALTHCARE CONFERENCES

MARCH 

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Until next time,

Kaushee