Digital Exhaust #175
Digital Exhaust #175
Lazy clinical AIs and the CDC discovers telemedicine
I’ll never mail you anything that I don’t like. And I love the stuff I found this week. I hope you enjoy it. I read alot of material to put this together — so do me a solid and share this with a friend with an endorsement….
OK, let’s go...
How many RVUs is your AI generating?
A sign of the times. The AMA created an appendix to the CPT index that tells us how to code for stuff done by AI. It’s called Appendix S and it by characterizes “work done by machines” relative to the work of other professionals. This NPJ Digital Medicine offers some context on coding taxonomy so that innovators, payors, regulators, and medical professionals can better understand it.
I think AI or human is a false dichotomy. We'll be heavily augmented with smart tools, for sure, but it won’t be either/or. And how we divvy up the effort between human and machine will be the unfixable rub.
Not addressed: What does it look like to bring an AI into your office to discuss their quarterly productivity? And how will we stop all these clinical AIs from organizing?
+ Ubie, a Japanese symptom checking AI, wants to come and work in the U.S..
Two weeks later and Twitter is still up
Daring Fireball curated apocalyptic predictions about Twitter.
Bari Weiss brought more insight into Twitter’s nefarious history of coordinated conversation control.
A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.
Check out the backchannel dashboard screenshot of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya’s account — the on/off blacklist buttons. Almost hard to believe.
+ Meta’s Oversight Board (their internal Ministry of Truth) has found that famous people and celebs get a pass on Instagram content moderation.
Swipe right for a liver transplant
Andreessen has an interesting piece on areas of opportunity in healthcare. It’s worth a peek. Understand that the VC world sees healthcare through a transactional lens. Low acuity, high margin stuff done on a phone. Meditation apps that 'solve' anxiety, etc etc etc. I couldn’t find any mention of hospital at home (the big opportunity, IMO), unless I missed it.
I’m guessing that none of these folks have ever tried to coordinate the hospital discharge for a medically complex child.
Thats swipe left, I guess.
Can an AI write poetry?
All I can say is that I’m blown away by GPT-3 AI writing. As I told a friend yesterday, the experience of watching AI create before my eyes has been matched only by my first experience with the WWW (on Netscape) in 1994.
(My personal knowlwdge management system is Roam Research which offers an OpenAI integration. But you can go to OpenAI and use their sandbox. And as youll see, theres no such thing as a free AI.)
On a deep level, and you have to look between the lines, this piece on AI poetry from the MIT Tech Reader is spooky.
In a certain sense, poetry may serve as a kind of canary in the coal mine — an early indicator of the extent to which AI promises to challenge humans as artistic creators.
+ Artists are none too happy about Lensa, the AI-driven app for creating paintings and avatars from pictures.
How social media is like a bar coffee shop cocktail party
Why an online community is like a bar via Powazek. I think this is perfect:
The most obvious way an online community is like a bar is that bars serve alcohol, and alcohol makes people loud and stupid. It actually depresses your hearing, so you can’t hear yourself talk as well, so you speak louder. And a room full of people speaking louder means a very boisterous room. And of course, alcohol reduces inhibition, so you say things you might not usually say.
Ironically, this week I also read that social media should be more like a coffee house.
In 2008 we called Twitter a cocktail party, FWIW.
Breaking in MMWR: telemedicine
It seems this is the week the CDC discovered telemedicine. Honestly, an anemic 'report' reflecting how the MMWR has drifted as a defining source of health signals.
Overheard on the social web
I wonder if we’ll hit the point where folks will insist on every surgery being done with a robot?
Digital Exhaust
Apparently there's health communism.
File under rando science in prestigious journals: Why do dogs chase squirrels?
Wait, do NPs really have worse outcomes?
LSD as an employee benefit.
For millenia women gave birth surrounded and supported by women. Then men got involved.
Thanks for reaching the bottom. Would love your input in the comments section and I’ll see you next week.