Personnel
Linda Yaccarino rides again
Less than a month after leaving her post as CEO of Elon Musk's X (formerly known as Twitter), Linda Yaccarino has a new job in health care.
She's taking over the CEO position at eMed, a consumer health company that's pivoted its focus in the last few years. Originally founded as an at-home testing company during the Covid-19 pandemic, the company ended its test-to-treat program and started using what it calls "Empathetic AI" in its telehealth platform. The company is now focused on selling GLP-1/GIP behavioral support and coaching services to employers and other payers who offer their beneficiaries weight-loss drugs.
AI
Going where no man has gone before
Most AI doctor services claim that they're not trying to replace doctors, and chatbots are more or less supposed to refer you to talk to a real doctor. But what if you're in an emergency situation where you literally can't ask a doctor for help? Like…you're in outer space?
This morning, Google Public Sector and NASA announced that they have developed a proof-of-concept "automated clinical decision support system" named the "Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant" (which is way less catchy than Hal, or even Siri.)
The tool is supposed to help the crew medical officer or flight surgeon diagnose and treat symptoms when crews aren't in direct contact with Earth. The trials of the system so far have tested its performance in a range of medical scenarios and measured its outputs using the Objective Structured Clinical Examination framework, according to Google. (I recently wrote about OSCEs and AI here; not entirely sure how they tested an AI on a test meant to capture, along with other things, bedside manner!) Early results showed "promise for reliable diagnoses," the company said, and Google and NASA are going to continue to refine the model.
Cybersecurity
UnitedHealth's big data breaches
UnitedHealth-owned Change Healthcare has updated the total number of people affected by its ransomware data breach from last year: 192.7 million.
That's almost double from the 100 million that Change reported to HHS last year and up from the estimate of "one-third of all Americans" then-UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty gave when he testified before Congress last spring. (That would be roughly 114 million, according to the estimates on the U.S. Census' website.) The claims clearinghouse and payment processor is also going to shut down its affected victims call center and stop enrolling people in its complimentary credit monitoring and identity theft protection services on August 26, according to a notice on its website.
UnitedHealth also earlier this year reported a hack affecting at least 5.4 million people at Episource, a risk management platform UnitedHealth acquired in 2023. Earlier this week, senators Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) sent UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley a letter questioning UnitedHealth's ability to secure its subsidiaries' systems due to the Episource breach. Both Episource and Change Healthcare have ongoing class-action lawsuits against them because of the data breaches.
No comments