Doctors lose cancer-spotting skills when they use AI

A recent MIT preprint study found that people who used AI to write an essay used less of their brains and had worse recall of their essays than people who wrote essays using only their brains. But surely doctors, some of the most highly educated people in our society, wouldn't experience that same decline in function?

That's maybe a bad assumption, a new study from four Polish health centers found: Using a colonoscopy AI tool that circles precancerous polyps makes doctors worse at doing so on their own without AI. The study wasn't meant to detect this "deskilling" effect, and the researchers attempted to control for factors that could confound the findings. But eventually, they became convinced that the effect is likely real.

Read more in Katie Palmer's story about the study, which also touches on what these results mean for trainee gastroenterologists.

health data exchange

Health apps say YES to IAS

In the wake of the recent Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' interoperability pledge, several companies have announced they've taken steps to make it easier for patients to collect their records in one place.

CLEAR — yes, the company with the people at the airport — is getting more and more business from health care as organizations like CMS increase demand for verifying and digitally keeping a person's identity consistent. (Check out our previous explanation of CLEAR's health care ambitions, if you need a refresher.) Health tech consulting company Nordic announced this week that it's partnering with CLEAR to bring its identity tech to Nordic's clients.
HealthEx, a patient health data management platform, announced that it is letting patients access their data in real time through TEFCA. The app verifies patient identity through CLEAR and communicates through MedAllies' and CommonWell's networks to find patients' health records at places like athenahealth.
AI-powered health care data platform xCures announced last week that it is pulling patient data through TEFCA as well, counting Epic and Kno2 among its data networks.
Health Bank One — a company that aims to be a "bank" for patients' various health records — announced yesterday that it is joining the CMS health tech pledge (though its application has not yet been confirmed, a company spokesperson said). It also claims to be the "first app to achieve CMS's vision for health care." However, buried at the bottom of the press release is that Health Bank One has not yet begun the process for certifying its "banking-grade digital identity" solution against the IAL2/AAL2 identity standards that companies like CLEAR already comply with. And though the company boasts that it includes AI assistants, founder Bo Holland told me last fall that Health Bank One is not developing its own AI, instead simply plugging in OpenAI and Google models into its tech.

Electronic health records

AI comes to the EHR

Two electronic health record vendors recently announced new, AI-native versions of their products/ Yesterday, Oracle proclaimed it "brought EHRs into the 21st century" with its new EHR (never mind that EHRs are, by their digital nature, largely a product of the 21st century) that's largely powered by voice interaction and AI agents. The new EHR is available for ambulatory providers in the US to purchase, with a version for the "full spectrum of acute care functionality" coming next year.

Ambulatory EHR provider athenahealth also announced this morning several new AI features for its customers, including intelligent summaries for clinical data in the patient's chart. The company is also piloting, in what it says is an industry first, a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for its athenaOne platform that will allow AI models to access data from the EHR in a standardized way.

News

Health tech news roundup

The Financial Times reports that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is poised to invest in and co-found a brain-computer interface company called Merge Labs that would be a direct competitor to Elon Musk's Neuralink.
Wearable maker Oura announced new women's health offerings, including a revamped Pregnancy Insights feature and a Perimenopause Check-In.
Virtual fertility and women's health provider Maven Clinic announced a new Maven Cycle Tracker tool and male fertility support program that includes sperm testing.

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