OpenAI’s ChatGPT took the world by storm a couple of months ago when they opened it up for public use. Since then, people have shown the infinite number of ways it can be applied in just about every area of life, from telling you the recipe for your favorite food to writing scientific abstracts that are essentially indistinguishable from real ones.
It offers insights and ideas to abstract questions and truly …
GPT, or Generative Pre-trained Transformer, is a type of artificial intelligence that has the unremarkable ability to generate human-like text. The program is free to use during the “research preview” time. GPT gained 1 million users in under a week of being released. Keep in mind that this technology is currently in the beta testing phase.
It is important to note the limitations. The quality of the responses depends on the …
My first job as a “real” doctor was in 1991.
During one of those early days in my career, one of my coworkers — a woman who worked in reception — approached me for help. Even then, I could recognize a look of desperation. It reminded me of the look I saw in my sister when all she could do to lessen the pain she had suffered for so long was …
Virtual primary care, unlike virtual urgent care, involves doctors who take the time to get to know their patients, creating (and nurturing) trusted doctor-patient relationships. Virtual primary care requires that doctors be consistently available for providing ongoing care to their patients.
Can doctors who meet their patients via video form an effective doctor-patient relationship, and does that relationship lead to appropriate and needed primary care?
The answer is a resounding “yes” on …
After becoming more familiar with telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing number of consumers today are realizing the value and convenience of virtual visits for minor urgent issues, chronic disease management, and mental health services.
At the same time, an overwhelming majority of consumers believe it is important that both their regular doctor and their telehealth provider have access to their health records for sharing critical data such as current …
Surgical training has long been confined to traditional models of Halstedian apprenticeship, where trainees are guided—but also potentially limited—by their superiors. Within this dynamic, the transfer of knowledge from expert to learner is dependent on individual educators, which can then be easily affected by personal circumstances and potential unconscious biases.
Physicians are often busy and rightly focused on patient care, but this can lead to uncaptured and delayed feedback for …
I’ve always been curious about the top 0.1 percent.
Their mindsets, backgrounds, upbringing, perceptions, skills, and behavioral traits that got them there.
After living through the Dot-com bubble, 9/11, Enron-WorldCom, the 2008 financial crisis, the meteoric rise of technology (search, e-commerce, social media, sharing economy), and the rise of a new class of billionaires, I intuitively sensed that there was a disconnect between what was going on in the real world, and …
There has never been a better time to be a woman entrepreneur. With ever-growing numbers of venture funds specifically for women and nonprofits dedicated to advancing women in tech, the next Apple is ripe for the picking. However, there remains a wide chasm to cross. Currently, startups led by women command less than 3 percent of venture capital investment dollars.
Upon diving deeper into this disparity, a 2020 paper published by …
Compared to the Silicon Valley world of moving fast and breaking things, health care change often happens slowly. Some of the reasons for the inertia of our industry make sense. Change impacting patients requires a vetting process to ensure we are creating net benefit.
But this inertia also exists partly because many believe our field is so uniquely complicated that it cannot be improved using lessons from other industries. But the …
In many ways, internet of things (IoT) is a double-edged sword: connected devices are capturing huge volumes and varieties of data that can be mined for everything from potentially life-saving health care information to guidance toward peak athletic performance, but it is incredibly difficult to convert that raw data into truly meaningful and actionable insights.
IDC projects that, by 2025, IoT devices will generate more than 73 zettabytes of data globally …
This article is satire.
Physicians today are confronting yet another epidemic, one that affects doctors directly and is not caused by a virus. It is the result of the “patient portal” through which patients send typed messages directly to their physicians. Though the portal has benefits, anecdotal experience suggests that high message volume is having a deleterious effect on doctors’ blood pressure.
I have dubbed this phenomenon “portal hypertension,” despite the objections …
“Mark my words. AI (artificial intelligence) is more dangerous than the nukes.”
– Elon Musk
The other day, as soon as I walked in to work, already running my usual ten minutes late, I was hustling from my office to the clinic when I saw one of our physician assistants in the hallway. Otherwise known for her calm composure, it seemed odd that she was visibly distressed. She had forgotten her laptop …
One in four Americans carry a diagnosis of arthritis, a significant cause of limitation from basic life activities to disability. One in ten adults has to limit their activities due to pain caused by this disease. Yet, a massive shortage of specialist physicians and geographical and licensure barriers restrict access to specialized medical care, especially in rheumatology offices. Also, the cost of arthritis is 303 billion dollars yearly …
Big Tech has had a surprisingly small impact on U.S. health care, so far.
Artificial intelligence, for example, outperforms physicians in many complex tasks (like reading mammograms and analyzing chest X-rays), yet AI remains woefully underused. Meanwhile, many have tried to spur operational efficiency using big-data analytics, but care delivery remains as inconsistent and ineffective as ever. Perhaps the most telling example of Big Tech’s struggles in medicine: 9 in 10 …
Your smartwatch talks a lot but may not say as much as you believe with regard to health. Constant data collection from wearables claims to improve medicine at large. Is the “quantified self” the next evolution or a gimmick for patients?
Imagine your sleep and heart data beamed straight to your medical record. Your care team might notice a red flag and schedule a virtual appointment immediately. Health care wearables, meaning …
Amazon recently announced plans to shut down Amazon Care, an in-home and virtual health care service.
The reasons cited were attributed to a significant overlap of services with the One Medical chain of clinics, which Amazon purchased in July of this year for 3.9 billion, as well as Amazon Care not being a complete enough offering for large enterprise customers for which it was targeting.
This is the third health …
Working remotely during the coronavirus pandemic has immersed physicians in technology, perhaps accelerating its integration with medical practice – but not necessarily its acceptance or authenticity.
I tend to doubt the veracity of much of what I read in electronic health care records. I also question reports based on data gleaned from large medical databases – for example, summaries about physician compensation and practice trends.
Many reports that profile physicians are generated …
More often than not, ground-breaking health care advancements are disproportionately accessible for those who already have favorable social determinants of health.
Improving cost, access, and quality, but for whom?
The boom of telehealth and digital health during the pandemic was a necessary shift to bridge the critical access gap while also supporting the public health measures implemented to slow the spread of COVID-19 – but did this change …
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a profound toll on older adults, isolating them physically and emotionally from their communities and families. Mental health has suffered across generations and, as a practicing geriatric psychiatrist, I have had a front-row seat to the unique conditions older adult populations are facing. Despite rising rates of depression and anxiety, infection control measures have accelerated the adoption of digital health, including telehealth, opening myriad new …
As the pandemic-stricken health systems recover from the unprecedented challenges that tested them for preparedness, agility, and health equity, the pandemic undoubtedly also nurtured rapid innovation in telehealth, vaccine manufacturing, and point-of-care diagnostics, which have streamlined and accelerated patients’ access to immediate care at the point of need.
These technological medical advances, especially in the realm of point-of-care diagnostics, are transforming our health system in three especially important ways:
Firstly, point-of-care diagnostics …
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