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Hospitals are getting into the chatbot business
These days, more and more people are asking chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude questions about diet, exercise, and health insurance. In some cases, we also receive questions about serious symptoms that would normally be discussed in a 911 call or doctor’s appointment. As STAT’s Katie Palmer reports, some hospitals are now trying to redirect those questions by building their own patient-facing chatbots that can pull directly from existing medical records and direct patients to care at their facilities. They say it’s about patient safety and finding new business.
However, hospitals are not technology companies and could be held liable if their chatbots fail and harm patients. Read more from STAT’s Katie Palmer on how healthcare organizations are trying to catch up with commercial large-scale language models.
“We are grateful to the federal employees who bravely shared their concerns and experiences despite understandable fear of retaliation.”
That’s STAT’s Lizzie Lawrence, speaking at Friday’s George Polk Awards, where she and many of my distinguished colleagues won for health care reporting. Read all of Lizzy’s important and groundbreaking FDA reports. Also read the American Science, Shattered, and MAHA Diagnosis series.
These are difficult times for journalists around the world. Lizzie also said: “I’m honored to work in such a collaborative and ambitious newsroom, where editors encourage reporters to pursue important health stories and leave no stone unturned.” Here and here.
Regarding positioning nurses as health experts
According to a recent Gallup poll, trust in doctors among Americans is at its lowest since the 1990s. Meanwhile, nursing has long been the most trusted profession among a list of about 24 professions that includes police officers, teachers, clergy, judges, etc. An opinion piece published Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine argues that this trust, which exists across political lines, should be harnessed for more effective public health messaging.
“Nursing scientists represent a largely untapped resource in national health communication,” the authors write. But despite nurses’ increased political influence in the midst of the pandemic, they are still too often left out of public health discussions. The authors suggest that nurses should have access to media training and that institutions should increase nurses’ professional access to journalists. That includes asking more doctors to nominate nurse scientists in response to approaches from the media.
Erectile Dysfunction: More than a Sexual Problem
It may seem intuitive, but if you ask people which is the more important medical problem, erectile dysfunction or heart disease, almost everyone will say heart disease. But the truth is a little more complicated, as urologist Denis Assaf-Adjei explains in a new First Opinion essay. ED is an early marker and predictor of heart disease. On average, cardiovascular disease develops about two to five years after the onset of ED, which Asaf Ajei believes is an important opportunity for intervention.
“It is past time to look at this disease from a different perspective,” Assaf-Adjei wrote. “Mocking or ignoring ED is a huge missed opportunity for men and public health managers.” Read more about what the evidence shows and what changes may be coming in the future.
Land mines await Vinay Prasad’s successor.
A few weeks ago, STAT’s Helen Branswell wrote about the challenges that await whoever is named to lead the agency, which has been without a Senate-confirmed director since August. We have yet to hear what will happen there, but in the meantime, STAT columnist Paul Knopfler has written about the turmoil that awaits whoever takes the soon-to-be-vacant HHS leadership position: director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. (Current director Vinay Prasad will leave the company at the end of this month.)
“Leadership at CBER should not be a rubber stamp, but unless you are a yes-man, it may be difficult to stay in the position for even six months,” Knopfler wrote. Read more of his analysis.
what we are reading
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Second Venezuelan doctor detained by immigration officials in south Texas, New York Times
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Flight path data shows how mosquitoes target humans, Wired
- What STAT readers think about nutrition education in medical school, STAT
- For many patients leaving the ICU, the battle is just beginning, KFF Health News
- GAO report shows gap between scale and enforcement of illegal e-cigarettes, STAT
