| | | | |  | | By Daniel Payne, Ruth Reader, Carmen Paun, Erin Schumaker and Evan Peng | | | | | 
Doctors could be reluctant to use AI tools if it opens them up to liability. | Getty | Artificial intelligence tools for health care are improving at a rapid rate. But that creates a risk of its own if doctors trust the tech over their better judgment. “As we think that something is really good and working well, we tend to pay less attention and tend to outsource and have less oversight on it,” Dr. Maulik Purohit, chief information officer at Lehigh Valley Health Network, said. Why it matters: If doctors are lackadaisical, patients could get hurt. People with rare diseases, for example, could be particularly at risk if doctors lean too heavily on AI tools. AI doesn’t have much data to rely on when diseases are uncommon and could have difficulty spotting the symptoms. At its best, Purohit said, AI tools are like GPS for doctors: assistants with valuable data. They shouldn’t dictate decisions. If the systems steer doctors wrong, it’s unclear who has to compensate the patient. Industry adjusts: At least one health tech company that aids doctors in making diagnoses, Regard, has created new interfaces to warn doctors about the risks of moving too quickly after the company suspected that some users were accepting its system’s suggestions without fully digesting them. Even so: Purohit worries about AI adoption in a world without guardrails in law or regulation. If a system makes a mistake, “Is that the responsibility of the technology itself?” he wonders. “Is that the responsibility of the user?” The American Medical Association, the leading advocacy group for doctors, said this week that liability should be limited for doctors who use the tech.
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Richmond, Va. | Evan Peng/POLITICO | This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. To cut down on fraud, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is enlisting … elderly people? The agency has set up a hotline where they can report misleading advertisements from insurers. At least one social worker thinks it’s an unfair task: “I don’t think Medicare beneficiaries should be the police.” 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 Alice Miranda Ollstein talks with POLITICO health care reporter Daniel Payne about the changing face of primary care, why Democrats and Republicans agree that the system needs an overhaul and the push to encourage nurses to take on new duties.
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Older people are both more likely to spread misinformation and to recognize it, psychologists say. | AP | There’s a psychology to misinformation — including who’s most likely to spread it and believe it, according to a new report from the American Psychological Association. The APA’s takeaways: — Most people struggle to apply their existing knowledge to new, conflicting information. “Everyone is susceptible to misinformation to some degree: We acquire it even when we know better, because fact-checking for accuracy is such a difficult cognitive task,” the report states. — People tend to trust information if it aligns with their beliefs. However, people tend not to fall for information that’s implausible or obviously false. Misinformation must be “sufficiently reasonable” for people to believe it. Who’s most susceptible? Adults over 65 share more misinformation and, counterintuitively, are also better at spotting misinformation because they’ve seen more of it over their lifetimes. People who are anxious or overconfident in their ability to separate fact from fiction are more susceptible to believing misinformation — and sharing it. Who’s least susceptible? People with higher levels of education and analytical reasoning skills. Why does it matter? Research suggests that misinformation has only a small effect on most people’s behavior. But it can influence some people’s behavior, and if they happen to be decision-makers or political leaders, it can influence health policy. The pandemic showed how misinformation can affect individuals’ health, public health writ large and trust in government. Debunking is out: Research shows that vigorously refuting health misinformation doesn’t necessarily change people’s minds. However, when people are exposed to the facts or made aware of potential false narratives before they encounter them, they’re better able to resist.
| | | | DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO APP: Stay in the know with the POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS – DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID. | | | | | | | | |  Lockdowns saved lives, but cost jobs, a new study found. | Getty Images | Nearly four years since much of the world locked down to flatten the Covid curve, the consequences of closing businesses and schools are still being studied and litigated. A group of American and European researchers developed a model they hope can inform decisions when the next pandemic strikes. Their study, published in Nature Human Behavior this month, simulates the health and economic impacts of different closures and behavior changes in the New York City metro area, including parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, during the first Covid wave. Their top insights: — Fear of infection, which prompted people to keep their distance from others, along with mandatory business closures, saved lives at the expense of jobs. — The cost benefit of closing nonessential customer-facing businesses in the entertainment, accommodation and food sectors was much higher than that for closures in sectors like manufacturing and construction. In the latter, deaths decreased only marginally, but unemployment increased drastically. — Shutting down early is better. Delay leads to more deaths but doesn’t save many jobs. “You really need to tailor the policies to the place that you are, knowing what the socio-demographic of the population is, what the employment in your region is, understand what the feedback effects between different activities are,” said Matteo Chinazzi, one of the study authors and a research associate professor at Northeastern University’s Roux Institute in Portland, Maine. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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