Artificial Intelligence
Lawmakers bristle at FDA's relationship with CHAI
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Republican lawmakers are sharply criticizing the Food and Drug Administration's relationship with a nonprofit group seeking to create a network of laboratories to test artificial intelligence products used in health care, STAT's Casey Ross reports.
In a letter sent Tuesday, the lawmakers asserted that the agency's budding partnership with the nonprofit Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) will embed a "clear conflict of interest" into the process of setting standards for AI tools. The letter points out that the nonprofit organization is composed of technology companies such as Microsoft and Google, as well as large health care systems that incubate AI businesses. If you remember, STAT previously reported on Microsoft's role in the industry body and how that could be problematic.
Read more about the letter here.
Medical Devices
Boston Scientific to buy vascular device maker
Boston Scientific said on Tuesday it will buy Silk Road Medical, a medical device company treating stroke, for $1.16 billion.
Silk Road Medical sells technology meant to prevent stroke in patients with carotid artery disease, a condition creating blockages in the major blood vessels connected to the brain. The company's core products enable a procedure that temporarily sends blood flow away from the brain to prevent plaque from blocking the vessel. Doctors then implant a stent to widen the artery.
Read more on the deal from STAT's Lizzy Lawrence here
social media
From the Surgeon General's mouth to digital health pockets?
This week Surgeon General Vivek Murthy argued that he believes that social media ought to come with warning labels "stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents." He also basically came out and said that it's hard to prove that the widespread mental health crisis affecting young people is attributable to social media. In fact it was in his lede: "... in an emergency, you don't have the luxury to wait for perfect information. You assess the available facts, you use your best judgment, and you act quickly."
This launched a long week of conversations about "is the technology really bad for the teens," with some valiant attempts to suss out what science actually tells us about all this from our colleagues in the news media. And Science put out a breaking editorial from editor-in-chief H. Holden Thorp on the "unsettled science of social media," in which he argued, that "Throughout history... the public's trust in science has been undermined when scientists with large public platforms have failed to state strongly enough that their pronouncements are based on science that remains in flux." Thorp concludes with a call for stronger research — Get your grant applications and manuscripts ready, researchers!
As we've learned over the last few years, the panic of crisis can prompt swift action. Concerns about the impacts of TikTok on teens is likely to result in more robust efforts to regulate how young people use social media.
But I also expect to see local lawmakers to find ways to move budgets around to try to get more mental health access for young people, no matter what form it takes. A bevy of digital mental health companies have already cropped up to serve the needs of young people and others have expanded to serve the population. Just last month, Talkspace and New York City Mayor Eric Adams held a press conference announcing that within six months of launching a $26 million program to make text- and video -based therapy available to New York teens, 6,800 have signed up. In the spirit of science, I hope people keep tabs on these efforts to make sure they are having the intended effects. Or if we ought to try something else.
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