IN THE DARK
A key FDA office focused on AI has gone silent
Food and Drug Administration officials hit a major milestone list year: a running list of medical devices enabled by artificial intelligence eclipsed 1,000.
But in the last nine months, the office focused on AI products has stopped providing updates altogether. So STAT's Katie Palmer made a list herself: the FDA has authorized at least 167 AI/machine learning devices since the last listed decision in September.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has dismissed (and in some cases, later attempted to re-hire) several of the agency's AI experts, leaving a potential knowledge vacuum inside an agency already struggling to keep up with the fast-changing AI landscape. And without a clear accounting of its own authorizations, the agency is leaving much of the public in the dark. In the words of one Stanford researcher focused on AI-aided medical devices: "We need more transparency, not less." Read more here.
82,138
Predicted overdose deaths jump slightly, interrupting a 12-month trend
My own beat — addiction and substance use — has experienced a surprising wave of good news in the last year and a half, with U.S. overdose death rates declining consistently month over month. But the CDC's running prediction for drug deaths in a 12-month period ticked upward this month — the first time in the last 13 months that the number has increased.
The predicted death toll for the period ending in January 2025 jumped slightly to 82,138, according to recent agency data. While it's a long way off from the all-time high of roughly 114,000, current overdose figures remain higher than at any point prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, which sent drug deaths soaring.
Hopefully, it's just a blip — a brief interruption to a significant and very promising trend. But with the drug supply still dominated by fentanyl and adulterants like xylazine or dexmedetomidine, as well as increasing use of methamphetamine alongside opioids, the situation could change quickly.
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