business
AMA panel plots AI coding refresh
Today, an American Medical Association-affiliated panel will convene a listening session around a potential new category of billing code for artificial intelligence products.
In 2024, the AMA's independent CPT Editorial Panel — which maintains the set of codes used by providers for billing and have a huge influence on reimbursement — formed a Digital Medicine Coding Committee (DMCC) to advise the panel on coding for tech, including AI. The committee is considering a new category of code for algorithms that crunch patient data into outputs that are used for making decisions about clinical care. Tentatively called "Clinically Meaningful Algorithmic Analyses," the new category would group AI tools in a single place in the CPT code set. Over the last few years, the CPT panel developed a taxonomy of AI services, and this year, four codes were added for "AI augmentative data analysis" used in procedures including electrocardiogram measurement and image-guided prostate biopsy.
Today's DMCC meeting is the second of two on the calendar, and it seems you can still register to attend, though you must abide by the AMA's confidentiality policy. A source told me it's possible we'll see a code change application for the algorithmic analyses at the September meeting of the CPT Editorial Panel. In other words, it is correct to view all this talk as a precursor to real action. Interestingly, the DMCC's membership is not posted online in any obvious way.
If anybody wants to chat about what's going on at these meetings or about AI procedure coding, please reach out.
business
Omada execs dish on going public
Last week, digital health company Omada went public, raising $150 mllion and valuing the company at just over $1 billion. In good news for digital health watchers, the stock did not immediately implode, and it's still trading above its $19 IPO price. Among the big earners in the IPO, as reported by Business Insider: Revelation Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, US Venture Partners, and Fidelity Management, who all made over $100 million on the listing.
Just after the stock started trading, I caught up with CEO Sean Duffy and president Wei-Li Shao. We talked about the company's quest of profitability, its work supporting people on GLP-1s, and why only a minority of its customers are opting for contracts where Omada guarantees clinical outcomes.
Read more here
Artificial intelligence
NIH asks for help with strategic plan for "AI beings"
The National Institutes of Health on Thursday issued a request for information on the creation of its AI strategic plan, capping off a week in which the Food and Drug Administration announced a broad rollout of a generative AI tool for its workforce and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services hosted a listening session on health technology as it plots an ambitious tech agenda.
The RFI says NIH hopes to chart a progression to eventual "fully autonomous, self-documenting biomedical AI beings" (?!) and will soon produce an "early one-year action plan." It's always interesting to try to read into what's coming from what's asked. And I have to say, I love all this talk about anthropomorphic AI entities. In particular, NIH wants guidance on:
- "Potential actions and milestones for transitioning from analytics to semi-autonomous agents and, ultimately, AI beings capable of hypothesis generation, reproducibility studies, and continuous learning."
Responses are due July 15.
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