AI for Administration in Healthcare + Non-invasive Glucose Monitoring
Doximity Launches AI-powered Tool to Streamline Administrative Tasks for Doctors
Doximity, a digital platform that caters to medical professionals, has launched a new tool called DocsGPT.com, which is integrated with OpenAI's ChatGPT, to help doctors with their administrative tasks. This tool helps doctors save time by assisting them with tasks such as drafting and faxing pre-authorization and appeal letters to insurance companies. Over 70% of healthcare providers still use fax to exchange medical information, so this tool could save a doctor hundreds of hours each year. DocsGPT offers a range of best medical prompts that are healthcare-specific and have been trained with AI. For instance, physicians can access drafts of letters to insurance companies for medication prior authorizations, appeal denials, medical disability letters, post-procedure instructions, and treatment instructions for children with asthma that are written in the style of Dr. Seuss.
ChatGPT was launched in November 2022, and since then many doctors have already found it helpful in streamlining routine tasks. However, physicians and researchers have cautioned that there are major limitations with this technology, as ChatGPT can give false information with high confidence. Despite this, Doximity's co-founder and CEO, Jeffrey Tangney, notes that the company has worked with doctors to fine-tune the product and provide a growing library of best medical prompts.
Doximity is also working to assist physicians in other ways. The company has integrated the tool with its free fax service to enable doctors to fax letters directly to insurers. However, it is important to note that physicians and researchers have raised concerns about the accuracy of medical citations generated by ChatGPT. While the tool can pull primary and secondary references from medical literature, it has also been known to make up references. Since the use of these references in appeal letters is important to a physician’s credibility, any unchecked errors could have severe consequences. Nate Gross, Doximity's co-founder and chief strategy officer, calls the technology "very promising," but he also warns that it should be approached judiciously.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for technology to support the healthcare system, such as telemedicine, remote monitoring, and chatbots. In this context, Doximity's integration of ChatGPT demonstrates the potential for AI to support healthcare professionals in their administrative tasks. However, the use of AI in healthcare raises ethical concerns such as bias in algorithms, patient privacy, and the impact on the doctor-patient relationship. The healthcare industry must ensure that AI technologies are developed and used transparently, ethically, and responsibly, with a focus on improving patient outcomes and addressing healthcare disparities. According to a report by Grand View Research, the global artificial intelligence in healthcare market is expected to reach USD 19.9 billion by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 43.8% from 2018 to 2025. This growth is driven by factors such as the increasing adoption of big data analytics, the need to reduce healthcare costs, and the rise in cross-industry collaborations and partnerships.
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Apple Watch Working Towards Glucose Monitoring
Apple is getting to the proof of concept stage with its non-invasive glucose monitoring technology that will eventually be integrated into the apple watch. For over a decade, Apple has been working on developing non-invasive glucose monitoring through a startup it acquired in 2010 called RareLight that was developing a method to non-invasively detect blood glucose levels.
So far, nobody has been able to develop non-invasive blood glucose monitoring. Current methods involve directly measuring the glucose in blood and therefore require some way to access blood. Even the least invasive methods involve very small needles. Apple is trying to use a similar approach that is used to measure heart rate and SpO2. The approach involves shooting beams of light at a specific wavelength and measuring what is returned to determine the concentration of glucose since the glucose would absorb light at a particular wavelength.
Currently, the apparatus needed to do these measurements is too big to fit in a smart watch and that is the next step for Apple, find a way to make the measurement apparatus smaller such that it can fit in an Apple watch.
If successful, this could mark Apple’s entry into the Diabetes market and provide people a non-invasive way to monitor glucose. The technology will still take several years to develop but if successful, it has the potential to disrupt the market. It will also add to the ECG and AFib history features bringing the Apple Watch to resemble or eventually replace some medical devices.
Featured Fake News
Apparently there is a term for when people are believed to have collapsed from side effects of the covid vaccine. It’s called the “Pfizer flop”.
This week, a Greek TV representative is being accused of having a Pfizer flop while on air. The original video was lost but here is another posting of it. You can see some of the comments indicating that people are relating this to Covid-19 vaccination.
Of course, this is fake. Not the video, but it’s relation to vaccination as this video was from August of 2020. 4 months before Greece rolled out the vaccines…
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