| | | | |  | | By Daniel Payne, Shawn Zeller, Carmen Paun, Ruth Reader and Erin Schumaker | | | | | 
TikTok is taking a beating from governments on both sides of the Atlantic. | Martin Meissner/AP Photo | The Senate could follow the House as early as today in voting to force the Chinese owners of the popular video-sharing app TikTok to sell, partly over concerns that the firm feeds American kids content that’s bad for their health. Our team in Europe reports that officials there are also scrutinizing the app’s health impacts. How’s that? The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, plans to consider banning a TikTok feature that essentially pays users to engage with the app. That could be addictive and harmful to the mental health of users, including teens, and might breach EU law, the commission said. The TikTok reward program included on the company’s slimmed-down “Lite” version of its app in Spain and France offers Amazon vouchers and other payments to users over 18 who fulfill tasks such as watching videos and liking content. The commission said TikTok failed to seek the prior approval required in the EU before launching the feature earlier this month and that children are at risk since TikTok might not identify underage users correctly. What they're saying: “We suspect TikTok ‘Lite’ could be as toxic and addictive as cigarettes ‘light,’” said Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton. “TikTok chose to launch TikTok Lite, which under the laudable promise of letting you watch videos without taking up too much network capacity, creates financial incentives for spending more time on your phone.” Even so: TikTok has until tomorrow to rebut those allegations. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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| | |  A new study gives telehealth an endorsement. | Mark Lennihan/AP Photo | Universal Medicare coverage of telemedicine could end in 2025 unless Congress extends it. A new study in Health Affairs suggests that it shouldn’t end. Researchers at Harvard University, the RAND Corporation and the National Bureau of Economic Research found that telemedicine use was associated with health benefits and only a modest increase in patient appointments and spending. Concern about cost is the biggest impediment to extending Medicare coverage of telehealth, which Congress first expanded during the pandemic’s height. The study found that between 2021 and 2022, patients in health systems that used telemedicine most often saw a decrease in emergency visits unrelated to Covid-19 and increased medication adherence for chronic conditions. Per patient spending rose 1.6 percent. Why it matters: Lawmakers have until December 2024 to make Medicare coverage of telehealth permanent. What’s next? Lawmakers have proposed a bevy of bills to extend telehealth coverage, but it’s not yet clear which could move or how Congress would pay for whatever additional costs it would create.
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Doctors can make use of AI, but shouldn't rely on it completely, according to two Johns Hopkins physicians. | Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/AFP via Getty Images | Diagnostic errors cause nearly 800,000 deaths or permanent disabilities a year in the U.S., making them as grave a threat as the worst diseases. Artificial intelligence promises to save many of those lives if it can improve on human reasoning. But don’t expect that anytime soon say Johns Hopkins University physicians David E. Newman-Toker and Joshua M. Sharfstein in a new piece for JAMA Health Forum. Why the skepticism? AI, as it exists now, is known for “hallucinating,” if not “confabulating,” they wrote. That means AI tools fail to distinguish fact from fiction. Sometimes, Newman-Toker and Sharfstein said, the tools “produce false statements unfaithful to the source text, nonsensical concepts, [and] citations to fabricated sources.” AI requires “gold-standard” data on which to train, they added, if the systems’ results are to be better than a doctor’s — and such data sets don’t exist. What can government do? Newman-Toker and Sharfstein see a significant role for regulatory and funding agencies. The National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and other agencies can invest in improving medical record databases so they meet the gold standard. Regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration can set rules to guide the development of new databases. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services can adjust how it pays providers to reward the development of AI tools that work. What’s next? For now, Newman-Toker and Sharfstein see a role for AI tools in helping doctors — who should remain the final decision-makers — make diagnoses. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
