It is like a bag of snakes. We heard Congressman Bill Foster, the only physicist in Congress, use this phrase yesterday. If you are a Harvard-trained PhD in physics and you go from developing data analysis software related to high-energy (particle) physics at a Department of Energy National Laboratory to serving as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, it would only be natural that you’d say “it’s like a bag of snakes” a lot. This reminded us of the bag of snakes that is the legislative and regulatory oversight of information technology. In the One Thoughtful Paragraph, we explain how one academic institution took the first step into handling the bag of snakes that is artificial intelligence in health care.
Other news about how different organizations are trying to handle the digital health bag of snakes:
- In collaboration with Manatt Health, the AMA published a report on commercial payer coverage of digital medicine CPT codes. This means there is now a public summary of health insurance coverage showing which health plans pay for digital medicine services, like telehealth or patient self-monitoring. The study found that most payers cover remote patient monitoring, while several payers are still considering coverage of the newer remote therapeutic monitoring codes — coverage of eConsults and eVisits is less consistent across plans.
- Using OpenAI’s Large Language Models, Hint Health will allow primary care doctors to record patient consultations so they don’t have to take notes during visits. Hint Health is a software company for “direct” primary care physicians that enables concierge care, where physicians charge a membership fee in a cash-only model to provide patients with unlimited access to primary care and telehealth services.
- Health Gorilla, a health information network and interoperability solution provider, announced the launch of its Patient Access solution, which will let health plans, pharmacies and other non-treating health care providers access patient health data by enabling consumers to submit queries to national health information networks.
To be clear, there are no shows or movies about a bag of snakes. Only Murders in the Building, however, comes close. We are grateful that the funniest and messiest television series is finally running its third season — with guest stars as uncontrollable as Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd — to join the other snakes in the bag that are Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Selena Gomez. While we are laughing at the clever chaos that only truly fine actors can create, we are glad that someone is taking seriously the AI-in-health-care bag of snakes. It should be obvious now, that the superior computer brain that is AI is poised to help the superior human brains of doctors. In fact, smart people seem to agree that doctors must at least explore how to take advantage of this powerful tool. And yet… how many doctors do you know also happen to be computer nerds? Enter the medical school at the University of Texas at San Antonio. It announced that it will let its students take a year off medical school to get a Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence from a sister UT college. It is the first dual degree of its kind, but it will definitely not be the only one. It is sort of like the dual power of Sara Bareilles writing a song for Meryl Streep to sing on the show — that’s how you take two great things and turn into one amazing thing (even though it seems like you started out with a bag of snakes).
