Category: News items

News that is interesting to me, and possibly to you

Will Your Next Doctor Be … A Bot? (SunFest) with bonus uke song

What happens when you put a news reporter, and AI researcher, a Bioethicist and a CMIO together to discuss AI, Chatbots, Bias and emerging trends? You get this highly interactive and entertaining panel. And maybe a song.

Thanks to the Colorado Sun, and XCEL Energy for sponsoring our panel on AI in Healthcare at SunFest, held in Denver on the Auraria Campus of the University of Colorado.

I very much enjoyed this conversation with my colleagues at the University of Colorado, including Dr. Casey Greene, Director of the Center for Health AI, Dr. Matthew DeCamp, Bioethicist at the Center for Bioethics, and practicing general internist.

Among other topics, we covered:

  • AI, Large Language Models and Chatbots, defined
  • Predictive analytics and how they’re different from Chatbot AI
  • The potential dark side of AI in healthcare
  • Using ChatGPT-like tools in summarizing electronic health records, in helping doctors write progress notes, and in helping physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and nurses, reply to patients via online messages.
  • Risks of automation, including Automation Complacency
  • The risk of hidden bias in AI, and how that compares with existing bias in healthcare today
  • Future plans for AI in healthcare

Listen to the end for an updated version of “Hospital of the Rising Sun – Pandemic Edition” with me and my trusty ukulele.

SunFest 2023: Watch every session with Colorado politicians, expert panels and more

Doomsayer, Reformer, Warrior: Which AI Attitude are You? (NYTimes opinion)

From the ethics debate, the AI Wars are heating up and there are 3 distinct factions predicting our AI future. Which one are you?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/opinion/ai-safety-ethics-effective.html

 

Designing for Health podcast (Salmi, Steitz, Lin) on Patients Receiving Test Results Immediately

Caution: humor and high quality research facts ahead! What percent of patients worry? What percent of patients prefer immediate release even if result is abnormal? There are research findings?

 

https://www.nordicglobal.com/blog/designing-for-health-interview-with-ct-lin-md-liz-salmi-and-bryan-steitz-phd-podcast

Listen in! This was a great conversation, with Drs. Steitz of Vanderbilt University and Liz Salmi, citizen scientist, patient researcher, punk rock star. I’m there too. Interviewed by Jerome Pagani and Craig Joseph MD. Will there be ukulele?

Here’s the paper:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10028486/

As more patients email docs, health systems start charging fees (KFF Health News)

What’s the buzz about physicians and APP’s charging patients for online messages? This is a nicely balanced and informative article on the current state of health system billing for patient messages.

As More Patients Email Doctors, Health Systems Start Charging Fees

Upon Comparing Oneself to Others (del Giorgio)

This beautiful essay by Paul del Giorgio in the Bulletin of Limnology and Oceanography is timely and prompts a lot of self-reflection on my part. I’m talking to you: all you high-achieving physicians/APP’s who had to be top of your class year after year and never turned off that competitive streak in your career…

Original Article Here:
https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/lob.10579

This prompts several questions for me:

  • Who is this thoughtful person?
  • What the heck is Limnology?
  • Is he writing this for me? (yes, he is)
  • Can Dall-E draw this for me? What would that look like?

from Bing - Dall-E generator

(from Dall-E: except this unhappy self-comparing doctor has 3 hands… and maybe extra fingers too)

CMIO’s take? This is reminiscent of my Failure Resumé. And so articulate. The entire article is a brief read, maybe 5 minutes. It was very much worth my time and maybe worth it for you. Be well, friends.

Hyperdimensional Computing Reimagines AI (wired.com)

Either I’m full of myself and over-optimistic about what I can learn, or I begin to understand dimensional computing as explained in this wired article. If so, super cool what this new way of computing holds for “explainability” of AI models in the future…

From wired.com

https://www.wired.com/story/hyperdimensional-computing-reimagines-artificial-intelligence/

In college I got all the way through Calculus I and II and into differential equations and a little into matrices and vectors. I can honestly say I have used NONE of that knowledge, and it has withered completely away in the intervening decades.

THIS article got me interested. Our contemporary problems: Large Language Models, at their root artificial neural networks, compute in a way that is very power-intensive. We are seeing this already in how OpenAI and others are worrying about scaling LLM’s to more users, moving the sophistication upward from GPT 3.0 to 3.5 to 4.0 with more and more layers.

Vector or Dimensional computing holds the promise of changing the paradigm for tracking findings, storing concepts, and manipulating them more easily in, lets say, instead of a flat table of data, into 10,000 dimensional vector space.

CMIO’s take? Although this sounds like a lot of woo-woo, read the article to get the low down. Ready slowly. It took me some time to begin to get it. The reward is, maybe glimpsing a future where AI models can be made to be Explainable. Something not possible at present with LLM’s. Could be game changing.

Long term lung damage from COVID infection (NYTimes)

This is a beautiful 3-D illustration of CT scan findings of COVID infection in the lungs, and the stories of the patients who survived, and now have changed lives as a result. Sobering, and illustrates, that even though our treatments and vaccines are excellent, we still have long term consequences for some with infection. Keep paying attention: Covid is not done with us.

From the NYTimes.com

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/31/health/covid-lung-damage.html

 

ChatGPT in the classroom: professors adapt (wired.com)

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

 

from wired.com

https://www.wired.com/story/dont-want-students-to-rely-on-chatgpt-have-them-use-it/

I love this. Time for humans to adapt. How might we use this in healthcare, the idea that students / learners / ?Patients take such an assistant (currently not good enough to be the gold standard) and use it as a tool, an assistant, a learning partner INSTEAD of rebelling against the inevitable tide of the future?

Reverse Osmosis (Wired.com) we were wrong all these years?

What we got wrong before: reverse osmosis, and a new idea

https://www.wired.com/story/everyone-was-wrong-about-reverse-osmosis-until-now

I don’t know about you, but I find reading about other scientific fields refreshing and gives me a chance to think about my own field with fresh eyes. Here’s a glance at how water engineers rethought osmosis, reverse osmosis and came up with a new theory that may lead to breakthroughs for fresh water for the world.

 

Your professional decline is sooner than you think (The Atlantic)

Yes, it is. Sadly, I think I’m talking about myself.

 
Screenshot From The Atlantic article

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/work-peak-professional-decline/590650/

There is a difference, David Brooks says, between “resume virtues” and “eulogy virtues.” The challenge is recognizing when in our work lives, the second (should) become more important than the first.

A really thought provoking essay.

And, profoundly saddening.

Jump. Serve. Worship. Connect. Behave differently in the last third of your life, compared the first (primarily growing and learning) or second (working toward recognition, wealth, power).

Ray Dalio also encourages us to think about this in his book Principles (or the much more readable comic version of Principles). The arc of life is long, and many of us look at the pebbles in our path instead of the compass and the horizon.

I’ve began to value my work and home relationships more, and be less slavish to urgent, less-important emails (The ONE Thing). Turning off notifications, dipping less into social media, learning to focus, be strategic, step back and think big picture. Let others gain and grow in the spotlight.

CMIO’s take? Look at ME! I have the humility to admit that coaching and mentorship are magnificent force-multipliers and so much more gratifying than solo achievement! (see what I did there?)