Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Big Tech: Data's Racial Biases Must Be Fixed Before AI Health Care Expands
As new generative AI models like ChatGPT gain popularity, some experts are saying that to ensure such tools work in healthcare, implicit racial biases baked into health data must be accounted for.聽Officials with Google and Microsoft discussed the use of AI in healthcare during the Healthcare Datapalooza event held Thursday in Arlington, Virginia. There is a lot of excitement around the potential for AI models like ChatGPT鈥攁 chatbot that crunches massive data sets to generate text, video and code鈥攆or healthcare use cases. (King, 2/23)
On research relating to covid 鈥
US celebrity Twitter posts鈥攅specially those from politicians and news anchors鈥攍ikely influenced the increasingly negative US public attitudes toward efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study published this week in BMJ Health & Care Informatics. (Van Beusekom, 2/23)
COVID-19 survivors with persistent symptoms are at more than double the risk of new-onset cardiovascular symptoms, suggests a meta-analysis to be presented Mar 6 at the American College of Cardiology (ACC)/World Congress of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session in New Orleans. (Van Beusekom, 2/23)
In other scientific, innovative health news 鈥
A California law that banned the routine use of medically important antibiotics for disease prevention in food-animal production was associated with a reduction in one type of antibiotic-resistant infection in people, researchers reported yesterday in Environmental Health Perspectives. (Dall, 2/23)
A new study suggests that medications used to control heartburn and other gastrointestinal issues may increase the risk of acquiring multidrug-resistant bacteria in hospital patients. The study, published today in JAMA Network Open, found that hospitalized patients using proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) had a nearly 50% increased risk of acquiring extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)- or carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales, with a slightly higher risk among patients who used PPIs twice a day. (Dall, 2/23)
Stephanie Gurley-Thomas could always tell that something was off with her hearing, but she didn鈥檛 know what. 鈥淲hen I was 15, I had a staph infection in my ankle. We ended up having an ototoxic drug to clean it out,鈥 she said. 鈥淥totoxic means it's poisonous to your ear, basically.鈥 Her symptoms gradually worsened, but because she was quite young, she didn鈥檛 consider that hearing loss might be the culprit. (Rogers, 2/23)
