Healthcare AI today: Gen Z job angst, AI anti-therapy, animal testing phaseout
News and views you ought to know about:
- Gen Z-ers pursuing careers in healthcare to avoid AI-related workforce shrinkage are learning a hard lesson. It’s this: Job security and job satisfaction are two very different things. Fortune explores the disconnect, citing a Stanford study documenting a 13% falloff in “AI-exposed” occupations alongside a survey by the shift-work platform Deputy showing five of the 10 unhappiest jobs are in healthcare. The very most miserable workers, according to Deputy, are those toiling away in the stable security of doctors’ offices and medical clinics. “Despite healthcare’s reputation for meaningful work, these roles are often more likely than most to leave workers burned out and ground down by long hours and high stakes,” Fortune reporter Orianna Rosa Royle notes. “Staffing shortages, emotional strain, unpredictable rosters and an aging population” are emerging as “key contributors to declining morale.” Meanwhile fast-food workers, waitresses and baristas are the most satisfied workers—and right now they’re enjoying better wage growth than desk workers. Get the rest.
- Out with animal testing, in with AI efficiencies. FDA Commissioner Martin Makary’s plans to make the swap are proceeding apace, according to Reuters. The news service spoke with 11 experts and learned the change appears on track to cut costs and timelines “by at least half” within the next three to five years. Several industry players are already using AI to predict how experimental drugs, for example, “might be absorbed, distributed or trigger toxic side effects,” we learn. One close observer, the president of drug development solutions at software maker Certara, says the industry is “getting to the point where we don’t actually need to do that [to animals] anymore.”
- It's no surprise AI talk therapy can do more harm than good. Anecdotal evidence supporting the cause + effect equation has been trickling in for months now. The Independent presents another set of worrisome cases in an article posted Sept. 2. The downsides of using AI for mental wellness can be severe, reporter Io Dodds writes. “Chatbots,” Dodds points out, “have allegedly fueled a paranoid murder-suicide in Connecticut, manic episodes in Wisconsin, a near miss with suicide in Manhattan, deaths by suicide in Florida and Washington, D.C., and ‘spiritual fantasies’ that have driven couples apart.” Dodds cites the work of UC-San Francisco psychiatry professor Joe Pierre, MD, who says some such cases may be correctly termed AI-associated psychosis. “The problem appears rooted in the basic unpredictability of modern chatbots, as well as their tendency towards ‘sycophancy,’ telling users what they want to hear,” Dodds reports. However, despite the technology’s potentially consequential shortcomings as a behavioral health aide, AI therapy “may soon be unavoidable.” Read the whole thing.
- Healthcare AI’s hype cycle has overstayed its welcome. And then some. A Sept. 2 post from Mayo Clinic Platform via MIT Technology Review enumerates the effects of the loitering, offering tips for eager AI sellers to sway prospective AI buyers. These include spelling out how any product at hand will deliver ROI, bring a low implementation burden, pass muster with regulators and prove its prowess in healthcare-specific applications. “To earn [providers’] trust and investment, AI developers must focus relentlessly on solving real problems, demonstrating proven results, integrating without friction, and maintaining transparency and compliance,” explains the post, which in places reads, perhaps understandably, like an AI composition. “Those that deliver on these expectations will have the chance to help shape the future of healthcare.”
- We’re gonna need a bigger C-suite. If so, it’ll be to accommodate a chief digital applications officer, chief observability officer, chief platform officer or holders of some other high-level roles to be named later. Becker’s Hospital Review has a list of the likely possibilities as projected by some established healthcare executives. “I’m sure new roles will emerge, but I also think many existing roles will need to be adapted for this new age of AI and automation,” Mouneer Odeh, chief data and AI officer at Cedars-Sinai comments. “For example, chief strategy officers will likely start to take on a bigger role in transforming workflows. Human resources will need to play a huge role in transforming the workforce. Technology leaders will evolve from service providers to drivers of transformation.” List with exec-level comments here.
- Fly-by-wire technology has been guiding passenger jet airliners since 1988. Its concept should translate quite easily to healthcare. The category works by converting pilots’ manual inputs into digital impulses and sending these as signals to flight control computers. The receiving machines calculate exact motion sequences needed to safely and smoothly make the pilot’s desired moves, then give commands to electronic actuators. A medical student studying AI at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York City explains how the approach would work in medicine. He also cheers on its advance. “Like many of my classmates, I’ve used AI to generate illness scripts, prep for patient interviews and create personalized study plans,” writes the MD candidate, Henry Diamond-Pott, in a piece published Sept. 2 in MedPage Today. “As the revolution in healthcare heats up, the challenge isn’t whether we should use AI—it’s how to design it like fly-by-wire: interpretable, stable and safe.” Hear him out.
- Also noteworthy:
- From AIin.Healthcare’s sibling news outlets:
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.