Hospitals struggle to validate AI-made clinical summaries, hemophilia treatment has few takers, & how many teens use Delta 8

"Are we really going to trust this? ... It was hard enough with someone who has medical training to understand the context."

March 13, 2024 Check out STAT+

Sponsored By

By Elizabeth Cooney Reporter, Morning Rounds Writer

Good morning. Today we have news about innovations only dreamed of not so long ago: AI-generated medical histories, gene therapies for hemophilia, and an experimental patch to convert throat movement into speech. None of them is a simple solution. Read why.

health tech Hospitals struggle to vet AI-created clinical summaries Adobe It's the needle-in-a-haystack problem, when a discerning medical eye searches for a clue to explain a patient's illness. As patient records grow more complex, so does the appeal of using large language models to summarize medical histories and simplify that needle hunt. But it's not clear whether models like Open AI's GPT-4 are up to the task. "Are we really going to trust this to be able to do that?" asked Rob Bart of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, recalling piles of paper charts. "It was hard enough with someone who has medical training to understand the context." As hospitals race to adopt AI tools, they have to balance the time they save for clinicians against the mistakes they introduce, the medical distinctions they miss, and the things they sometimes make up. And they have to create new ways to test the tools and insert safety checks before clearing them for use in medical settings. STAT's Katie Palmer and Casey Ross explain. politics Looking deeper at Biden's budget proposals for health President Biden unveiled his requests for the 2025 budget on Monday, perhaps his last chance to cement a legacy on drug costs, cancer research, and broad health care coverage. Acknowledging that presidential budget proposals often include priorities unlikely to become law, STAT's John Wilkerson and Sarah Owermohle picked out potential regulatory tweaks and funding shifts — or a lack thereof — that have advocates and policy experts on high alert. Here are three: Drug shortages: The president had already proposed creating an office to coordinate the government's strategy for mitigating drug shortages, and his 2025 budget proposes to fund it for the first time. Biosimilars: The budget proposes a change to the law that would let pharmacists fill prescriptions for brand-name biologics with biosimilars without doctor permission, to lower drug costs. Climate: The Biden administration is once again asking Congress for a relatively small allotment to fund its Office of Climate Change and Health Equity. Read more about a mental health budget boost — and where budget asks stayed flat. patient voices ALS patients after Amylyx trial failure: 'What do I do?'  The drug Relyvrio had already won approval to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, but a later trial showed it did no better than placebo for patients with the neurodegenerative disease. While that was disappointing for its maker, Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, the news was crushing for patients. STAT's Annalisa Merelli spoke to some who, despite the challenges of their disease, shared what the news meant to them. "Drugs that are formulated to address the effects of ALS may not work for every patient with their ALS, but they may still be viable for subsets of patients with ALS," said John Russo, noting that although research in the field is at an all-time high, nothing has yet worked against the disease. "That's why today's news is so disappointing." "I was not expecting this outcome, given the positive results and survival data we got from Phase 2," said Gwen Peters.  "The number one question is, what do I do?"  Read more.

---

---

closer look Hemophilia gene therapies have few takers Credit uc/lc  You could say Noah Frederick, 23, has been waiting all his life for a gene therapy to cure his hemophilia A. Now two gene therapies are here, but he's not sure he wants one for his bleeding disorder. "I'm on the fence," he said. He's not alone: Only a handful of patients with hemophilia B, the rarer form of the disease, appear to have been treated worldwide since Hemgenix was approved in November 2022. Since Roctavian was approved for hemophilia A last June, only three patients have been treated. History may hold the explanation: Hemophilia gene therapy was originally conceived during the AIDS crisis, when contaminated blood-clotting products killed thousands of patients. Since then, new treatments, including synthetic clotting factors, radically changed the standard of care. That allows patients to be cautious about a treatment that some data suggest is more of a reprieve than a cure. STAT's Jason Mast explores the question. medical devices Experimental patch translates throat movement into speech to help those with voice disorders In a small, preliminary trial, researchers have tested a soft adhesive patch they say can turn throat movements into speech. Created from a material that converts motion into electricity, the sticky patch changes muscle movements in a person's throat into electrical signals that power the device and flow into a machine-learning algorithm trained to match these moves to words, which are then projected into a speaker. The study, which appears in Nature Communications, has some big caveats. It was small, testing the patch in only eight people, none of whom have voice disorders. And some people with voice disorders have had their voice boxes removed because of cancer. The research team also needs to add more phrases than the five they tested to the machine-learning algorithm and make the voice customizable. "Consider this a proof of concept demonstration," study co-author Jun Chen said. STAT's Lizzy Lawrence has more. health 11% of high school seniors may be using Delta 8 THC Over the last year, 11% of high school seniors said they'd used Delta 8 THC, a new JAMA study based on a national survey reports. That's a lot, Nora Volkow, director of NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse, said about the quasi-legal psychoactive version of cannabis. "That's at least one or two students in every average-sized high school class who may be using Delta-8." The popularity of these products, available in edibles resembling snack foods like Flamin' Hot Cheetos, Gummy Worms, and Pop Rocks, has soared after a 2018 legal loophole allowed their sale online, at gas stations, smoke shops, and in many states where traditional marijuana is illegal. While 11% of the 2,186 respondents surveyed reported using Delta 8 in the last year, 68% of users reported using it more than three times, and 17% of users reported using the product more than 40 times. STAT's Nicholas Florko has more.

---

More around STAT

Check out more exclusive coverage with a STAT+ subscription Read premium in-depth biotech, pharma, policy, and life science coverage and analysis with all of our STAT+ articles.

---

What we're reading New York trusted this company to care for the sick and elderly. Instead, it left people confused and alone, ProPublica Health AI companies say they'll keep humans in the loop. But what does that actually mean? STAT A new $16,000 postpartum depression drug is here. How will insurers handle it? KFF Health News Opinion: Good health care price transparency rules are at risk if Congress doesn't act, STAT Every new mom in this U.S. city is now getting cash aid for a year, NPR For-profit health system's Mass. hospitals teetering on the brink of financial disaster, Boston Globe

---

Thanks for reading! More tomorrow,

elizabeth.cooney@statnews.com

---

Enjoying Morning Rounds? Tell us about your experience Continue reading the latest health & science news with the STAT app Download on the App Store or get it on Google Play

STAT, 1 Exchange Place, Boston, MA ©2024, All Rights Reserved. I no longer wish to receive STAT emails

Update Newsletter Preferences     •    Contact Us     •    Advertise with Us     •    View in Browser