| | | | |  | | By Ruth Reader, Erin Schumaker, Carmen Paun, Daniel Payne and Evan Peng | | | | | 
Punit Soni | Suki Ai | Punit Soni, CEO of Suki AI, thinks the White House missed the boat in its executive order on regulating artificial intelligence. His eight-year-old company has rolled out its AI dictation service to aid doctors’ clinical note-taking to some 200 health systems, groups and clinics, giving him a big stake in regulation of health care AI. Soni talked with Ruth about what regulators should consider as they move forward. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. President Joe Biden has proposed regulation of AI in a new executive order. What’s your take? It's a good thing that the powers that be are thinking about it. That’s better than being oblivious. But I don’t see any representation from across the industry in how the executive order was shaped. I don’t see AI startups being involved. I definitely don’t see health care folks being involved. Now, it’s possible that companies with lobbying power were involved, but historically, that usually ends up in regulatory capture. Biden wants AI companies to reveal more about how their systems work. Is that OK? He’s created an executive order which indicates explicitly the type of AI model that companies will have to report on, and those are extremely large models today. But what if, in 20 years, even a small startup has these capabilities? Should every small startup have the same reporting burden? Technology today is the table stakes of tomorrow, and this will create a tremendous burden for small companies. What’s missing from the executive order? I would rather we spend some time trying to figure out what is the AI version of [the health data privacy law] HIPAA. Exactly what kind of data are we protecting, and how should we manage this data? How is it used in AI models? You’re talking about a world where access to data and access to AI models can create new synthetic data that can be used to do other things. What does that really mean for compliance? HIPAA privacy? Security? What does it really mean for anonymization? I don’t think the executive order picked up on that at all.
| | |  Boston, Mass. | Melissa Zeller | | This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. Scientists identified neurons in mice that prevent eating too much, too fast, a new study in Nature says. A neuroscientist tells Science that the results could help understand humans’ eating habits and disorders. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com, Daniel Payne at dpayne@politico.com, Evan Peng at epeng@politico.com, Ruth Reader at rreader@politico.com or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com. Send tips securely through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp. Today on our Pulse Check podcast, host Kelly Hooper talks with POLITICO health care reporter Lauren Gardner about an FDA decision expected later this week on a landmark gene-editing treatment for people with sickle cell disease.
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AI could help identify women at risk of birth complications, a new study found. | Ulises Ruiz/AFP via Getty Images | Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston hope that, in the future, artificial intelligence could help doctors identify patients at risk for a dangerous childbirth complication. Severe bleeding after childbirth, or postpartum hemorrhage, typically happens shortly after delivery or up to 12 weeks postpartum. In a new study, investigators prompted Flan-T5, a publicly available large language model, with risk factors associated with postpartum hemorrhage. They then asked the model to analyze discharge summaries from the electronic records of 131,284 U.S. patients who gave birth between 1998 and 2015. The model identified 47 percent more patients with postpartum hemorrhage than the standard method of using billing codes, with 95 percent accuracy. Their results were published last month in the journal npj Digital Medicine. Why it matters: About 14 million women worldwide experience postpartum hemorrhage each year, 70,000 of whom die, according to the World Health Organization. Those who survive might need surgery to control the bleeding. Some have long-term health effects following postpartum hemorrhage, such as post-traumatic stress disorder or cardiovascular disease. What’s next? The goal is to eventually use the tool to predict who’s at risk for postpartum hemorrhage before they develop the complication. “It could be used to help guide real-time medical decision-making, which is very exciting and valuable to me as a clinician,” Dr. Vesela Kovacheva, a study co-author, said in a statement. The team plans to use the same research approach to study other pregnancy complications.
| | | | |  Drug legalization is opening new markets and one investment firm sees a chance to profit. | Getty Images | A Canadian company is betting on drug legalization. Safe Supply Streaming is an investment firm looking for products and services that will benefit from the decriminalization the company’s leaders believe will soon sweep the world. “The war on drugs has been a misguided policy. It cost us trillions of dollars. It led to millions of deaths and we live in a world where drug use is at an all-time high,” Ronan Levy, president of Safe Supply Streaming, told Carmen. The case: Safe Supply’s executives argue that expensive, unregulated drugs lead people to more toxic ones, such as the synthetic opioid fentanyl that drove most of the estimated 110,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. last year. He said that providing a safe and regulated supply of drugs, even dangerous ones like cocaine, can decrease overdoses. Taxing drug sales will provide the money needed to educate drug users on how to use drugs safely, or at least mitigate harm, and to treat users, he said. And the company believes it could save society money in the long run, considering the current cost of policing illegal drugs. Changing mores: In the U.S., Oregon has decriminalized the possession of small amounts of hard drugs, a measure many Oregonians have seen as a failure since it didn’t cut the state’s overdose rate. But Safe Supply Streaming sees a trend. “Australia has legalized different drugs for medical use," said Bill Panagiotakopoulos, the company CEO. "The Middle East is looking to deschedule CBD. Europe is pushing forward on their drug reform policies, so much so that Bern, Switzerland, has put a request to the federal government to sell cocaine recreationally.” | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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