Closer Look
What happened when NYU launched a private ChatGPT for its health data
Courtesy Joe Carrotta/NYU Langone
A fourth-year medical student, a music therapist, a child psychiatrist, and a physician-researcher join a "prompt-a-thon" — this is not the beginning of a joke, but the setup for NYU Langone's experiment in using ChatGPT. They were among 70 participants at a workshop set up to familiarize NYU's staff with its HIPAA-compliant version of the OpenAI technology, and the potential it offers.
For the foursome, the task was to use ChatGPT around the theme of equity. AI was not great at it: It couldn't identify instances of bias in the text of the patient record, nor could it exhaustively identify them in a research article assessing Covid-19 disparities. But that was precisely the point of the exercise: to educate health care providers about the opportunities presented by generative AI technology as well as its limitations. STAT's Mario Aguilar followed the workshop, and has the story.
environmental health
Canadian wildfire smoke led to rise in U.S. ER visits for asthma
Smoke from Canada's wildfires affected the U.S. from late April until early August this year, and a new CDC report found that over a 19-day period, asthma-associated emergency department visits in the country were 17% more than expected for the age group and region where they occurred. The report, which also found increased asthma visits in the days following the wildfire smoke, in particular among children, provides quantitative evidence of how wildfire smoke can negatively impact respiratory health.
In New York state, where the air quality was compromised by wildfire smoke from June 6-8, the increase in asthma-related ER visits was especially striking. On June 7, there were 147 visits statewide, or nearly 82% more than on average from June 1-5 (81 a day), prior to the smoke setting in. Eastern Lake Ontario registered the largest increase, 179%, and all regions except the Adirondacks registered at least a 35.5% increase. Young people were especially affected: Asthma-related visits for people ages 10 to 29 were up almost 198% on June 7 compared to the June 1-5 average.
Covid-19
Study reinforces how pulse oximeters delayed Covid care for Black patients
STAT's Usha Lee McFarling has this report: Black patients experienced delays in receiving Covid-19 treatment because of pulse oximeters that overestimated the amount of oxygen in their blood, research published yesterday in JAMA Network Open has found. The study of nearly 25,000 patients adds to the evidence that pulse oximeters may harm patients with darker skin because they aren't as accurate for them, and may lead doctors to undertreat them. "Pulse oximeter inaccuracies are central to the racial and ethnic differences in receipt of Covid-19 therapies," the researchers wrote.
They also found hospital readmissions were higher among patients whose need for Covid-19 treatment was not initially recognized, though they said it was unclear if this was due to delayed treatment or other factors. While the study found inaccuracies were higher for patients with darker skin, researchers said inaccuracies in the devices also delayed treatment for white patients, suggesting clinicians should be mindful of potential errors that could impact all patients.
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