The ideas and innovators shaping health care
| | | | |  | | By Carmen Paun, Erin Schumaker, Evan Peng, Daniel Payne and Ruth Reader | | | | | 
Pharma executives are hoping AI can juice their drug development. | Jean-Christophe Verhaegan/AFP/Getty Images | Pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers expect artificial intelligence to have a profound impact on their businesses next year and are already experimenting with it, according to a Deloitte Center for Health Solutions survey of some 120 executives. Drug and device makers are exploring how advanced AI could automate repetitive functions, reimagine supply chains and support compliance and regulatory affairs, according to Deloitte. Who’s in charge? About a quarter of the pharma executives responding to the survey said they have established governance and oversight for AI and another half said they were expecting to do it over the next year. Medical device manufacturers are slightly behind: One in 5 respondents from the industry said they have a governance and oversight structure in place. Nearly 60 percent expect to have one next year. Most of the pharma and medical device executives said using AI for research and the discovery of new products is a top priority. The holdouts: A quarter of medtech executives and just under a fifth of pharma executives said they were waiting for more evidence AI could help their businesses before investing.
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São Miguel Island, Portugal | Erin Schumaker/POLITICO | This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. A longtime symbol of the medical profession, a stethoscope, could someday be replaced by a more high-tech tool: a laser camera powered by AI. It's under development at Glasgow University. 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 Katherine Ellen Foley talks with POLITICO White House Correspondent Adam Cancryn, who explains why the White House says it can use "march-in rights" to seize patents for drugs developed with federal funds and how the move could give President Joe Biden another tool to lower drug prices.
| | | | | | |  Wounds heal slower as people age, a quandary under investigation. | AP | The National Institute on Aging has awarded a Boston University researcher a $1.2 million grant to study why wound healing slows in old age and how to improve it. The awardee, Dr. Daniel Roh, a surgery professor at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, will research a cellular process that aids in normal wound repair but loses that function as people age, delaying healing. Roh sees patients with wounds and scars in clinical practice, where he performs reconstructive and cosmetic surgery. His long-term goal is to become a surgeon-scientist who advances research to directly benefit patients, he said in a statement. Why it matters: Chronic wounds don’t heal in an expected amount of time — often within three months — or never heal. Wound healing slows with age, and slow-to-heal wounds affect millions of older adults each year, increasing their risk of infection and tissue death. Chronic wounds and delayed healing can hurt patients’ quality of life or kill them. The problem is also expensive. Chronic wound care costs the U.S. about $10 billion annually, with most of that spending going toward treatment for older adults.
| | |  Johns Hopkins is examining how it collects data, with AI in mind. | Getty Images | | | "Having valid data — data that you can trust, that you can go through — It is a process that every institution is suffering from." Luis Ahumada, founding director of the Center for Pediatric Data Science and Analytic Methodology at Johns Hopkins | | Major health providers are rethinking how they collect and use patient data — with an eye toward building AI tools. How so? Luis Ahumada, founding director of Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital’s Center for Pediatric Data Science and Analytic Methodology, said his hospital is changing — and creating new — processes for data collection that improve reliability and make it more conducive to training AI systems. Others are, too. Dr. Lara Jehi, the Cleveland Clinic’s chief research information officer, said significant investment is going into collecting, verifying and de-identifying data at its facilities. “We’re doubling down and validating the different paths to gain data,” she said. Beyond data collection, providers are also developing practices to test models that use, introduce and audit the data. Why it matters: Data has become increasingly valuable in training AI models for clinical care and administrative work. But data has to be reliable, verifiable and consistent across systems to be useful in creating new AI tools — and some current practices don’t create datasets that work. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
