Healthcare AI today: Bad diet advice from LLMs, ‘Dawn’ working on cancer vaccine, Generative AI earns $50M, OpenAI’s healthcare push

News and views you ought to know about: 

Study: LLM chatbots are not dieticians. Be careful trusting ChatGPT with even simple medical questions. A new survey found that the information AI doles out may be outdated, misleading or generic—even for something as simple as a healthy diet. This isn’t shocking to a doctor who spoke with VeryWellHealth who said she’d be “extremely reluctant to tell a patient to ever do something based on ChatGPT.” 

That comment comes from Ainsley MacLean, MD, a health AI consultant formerly with the MidAtlantic Kaiser Permanente Medical Group. For context, she was commenting on the results of a recent study published in Nutrients that found multiple chatbots—including Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT—are not good advisors on weight loss, and their answers could be misleading. The study found the LLMs can recommend healthy meal options, but they’re unable to adequately balance proteins, fats and carbohydrates—the macronutrient ratios necessary to improve healthy eating, especially when weighed against the dietary needs of an individual patient.

MacLean added that it’s necessary to question any LLMs’ results and look into when its pullable data set ends in order to improve accuracy. This includes asking AI to double-check that it’s correct. 

At the end of the day, it may be best to not rely on them at all. At least for now. 

University of Oxford turns to supercomputer for help with cancer vaccines. One of the most powerful AI-onboarded supercomputers in the U.K. is being loaned out to scientists at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Medicine as they work to develop life-saving cancer vaccines. The computer, known as "Dawn," will be tasked with analyzing tens of thousands of cancer patient records, looking to find patterns that could unlock the key to new treatments. 

In an interview with the BBC, the team said Dawn will allow them to speed up a process that manually may be impossible, given the complexity of cancer. The scientists will have access to Dawn for 10,000 hours. The supercomputer is housed at the University of Cambridge, where access is facilitated by the U.K. government and the university, based on need. 

Some facts:

• Dawn was unveiled in 2023, but heavily improved in 2024.
   
• It’s available to use for commercial projects as well as research initiatives. 
   
• It’s been used to research fusion energy and tackle the effects of climate change. 
   
• Intel and Dell had a hand in Dawn’s development. 
   
• The supercomputer is proficient at deep learning tasks. 

Generative AI company earns $50M Series B seed funding. As scheduling moves online, fewer people are answering phones at medical clinics. However, front desk staff are often left balancing phone calls and other administrative tasks, resulting in long wait times for patients who may call in with a medical question. Assort Health, an AI startup, is hoping its tech can solve the problem—and investors are betting it can. In announcing $50 million in Series B funding this week, the company is now said to be valued at $750 million, according to AutoGPT. 

Assort Health deploys voice agents to support calls with generative AI, automating tasks such as scheduling without the need for a human to pick up the phone. The kicker is that Assort’s offering is healthcare specific, meaning its technology is designed with a provider group or hospital in mind—and it adapts to real-world feedback, based on the needs of a specific office. 

Its list of clients includes dozens of specialty care clinics, including large groups and small practices alike.

OpenAI taps leadership for healthcare expansion. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, has made a couple of big hires: Nate Gross, the cofounder of Doximity, and Ashley Alexander, former co-head of product at Instagram. According to Business Insider, both are taking leadership roles in the LLM developer’s healthcare business. For now, OpenAI has been mostly deploying its technology in a support capacity, mainly automating common administrative tasks at hospitals. But, founder Sam Altman has made his ambitions clear, and he wants to see GPT-5 being used more often in research and diagnostics. 

No official announcement about the future has been made, but it’s safe to say OpenAI is building a team for whatever comes next.

Some facts:

• Doximity GPT, fueled by ChatGPT, is a HIPAA-compliant service that, among other things, acts as an AI scribe. Gross helped launch the spinoff in 2023.
   
• Gross also founded Rock Health, which funds various healthcare startups. 
   
• Alexander’s background is in algorithm-driven content marketing. She worked with Meta and Instagram for 12 years. 
   
• OpenAI previously hired Karan Singal, a former Google employee who worked on its healthcare offerings. 

From AIin.Healthcare’s sibling outlets:
 

• Health Imaging: Chatbots offer patients more appropriate MRI explanations than experts, study shows 
   
• Cardiovascular Business: Health systems use AI to target patients who may have elevated Lp(a) levels