Health care

Prof. Pat Pataranutaporn speaks with The Guardian reporter Andrew Gregory about the lack of safety warnings and disclaimers in AI overviews, specifically in AI-generated health materials. “The absence of disclaimers when users are initially served medical information creates several critical dangers,” says Pataranutaporn. “Disclaimers serve as a crucial intervention point. They disrupt this automatic trust and prompt users to engage more critically with the information they receive.”

A new study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere has found a correlation between addiction and eye care, reports Hadley Barndollar for MassLive. “The study found nearly half of the patients with opioid use disorder being treated for the eye infection were eligible to initiate medication-assisted treatment,” explains Barndollar. “But medications were only initiated when an addiction consult occurred, highlighting how much more eye doctors responding to emergency rooms can offer patients beyond vision care.” 

Senior Research Scientist Leo Anthony Celi speaks with New York Times reporter Gina Kolata about the use of AI in health care. “The real concern isn’t AI itself,” says Celi. “It’s the AI is being deployed to optimize a profoundly broken system rather than to reimagine it.” 

Researchers at MIT have developed a wearable breast cancer ultrasound device that could be used to detect breast cancer earlier, reports Amerigo Allegretto for AuntMinnie.com. “The device can image as deep as 15 cm into breast tissue and can image the entire breast from two or three locations,” explains Allegretto. “The team described the technology as an end-to-end system ultrasound architecture consisting of a novel sparse array geometry and a codesigned data acquisition system.” 

Prof. Marzyeh Ghassemi and Monica Agrawal PhD '23 speak with Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray about the risks on relying solely on AI for medical information. “What I’m really, really worried about is economically disadvantaged communities,” says Ghassemi. “You might not have access to a health care professional who you can quickly call and say, ‘Hey… Should I listen to this?’”  

Prof. Jonanthan Gruber speaks with Boston 25 reporter Amal Elhelw about increased health insurance premiums. “It’s an enormous emotional toll,” says Gruber. “It’s just not a stress we should put on people in a nation as wealthy as America.”  

MassLive reporter Scott Kirsner spotlights Claire Beskin MBA '22, CEO and founder of Empallo, a virtual clinic for heart care aimed at preventing cardiac issues before they happen. “It handles everything from scheduling to prescriptions to billing,” writes Kirsner. “Empallo’s approach, Beskin said, is ‘virtual first,’ meaning it tries to give patients an online consult with a doctor when possible, and send them into the office when necessary.” 

Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with David Frum from The Atlantic’s “The David Frum Show” to shed light on the American healthcare system and health care disparities. “The issue in the U.S. is there are the haves and the have-nots—the haves get comparable health care to the rest of the world at a much higher price; the have-nots get worse health care at a much higher price,” says Gruber. “There’s really two fundamental challenges in U.S. health care: There’s disparities, and there’s costs.” 

Prof. Hugh Herr speaks with Bloomberg Businessweek Daily host Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec about his work creating bionic limbs that combine human physiology with electromechanics. “I really realized how limited the current prosthetic technology was and I dedicated my life as a young man to really advance the field and enable extraordinary technology that will allow people to do what they want again, to move again and have the bodies that they seek," says Herr. 

Writing for Forbes, Senior Lecturer Guadalupe Hayes-Mota 08, SM '16, MBA '16 explains the CARES framework, a new model for founders looking to integrate ethics into their company.  “Biotechnology can cure, extend and transform life,” writes Hayes-Mota. “But based on my experiences, its full potential can only be realized when innovation and ethics advance together. To every scientist-founder at the edge of discovery: How can your business plan not only explain how you’ll succeed, but also why your success should exist?” 

Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with Boston 25 reporter Amal Elhewl about the anticipated rise in healthcare premiums. Gruber predicts “prices could jump by as much as $25,000 a year for people like small business owners or entrepreneurs,” Elhewl explains. “If 4 to 5 million people lose health insurance, we’re talking about on the order of 5,000 extra deaths every year because we have not extended these subsidies,” adds Gruber. 

Writing for STAT, Senior Lecturer Guadalupe Hayes-Mota 08, SM '16, MBA '16 examines how the closure of local pharmacies across the country poses a significant public health risk, particularly for Americans in rural communities who, like Hayes-Mota’s father, “depend on their local pharmacy not only for medicine, but for survival.” Hayes-Mota emphasizes that “addressing this crisis requires three urgent steps: supporting underserved areas with targeted incentives and mobile or telepharmacy services, investing in the workforce through safe staffing and career pathways, and granting pharmacists provider status with expanded scope of practice.”

Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with Newsweek reporter Jasmine Laws about catastrophic healthcare plans. "A common conservative criticism of public provision of health insurance is that we should just give folks 'skinny' or 'catastrophic' plans. But what these critics never grapple with is what would be included in these plans,” Gruber explains. “By the time you include anything that would be considered decent insurance – hospital, doctor, drugs, maternity care, mental health care – you are already at 90 percent of the cost of a generous insurance plan. The only way to really make a plan 'skinny' is to charge high deductibles, which many plans on the exchange already do."

Prof. Deblina Sarkar speaks with Bloomberg Businessweek Daily reporters Carol Massar and David Gura about her work using microscopic technology to treat and identify health issues. We are building “tiny nanoelectronics chips which can seamlessly integrate with our body and brain,” says Sarkar. “This can diagnose disease or treat diseases which even drugs cannot fix.” 

Writing for Forbes, Senior Lecturer Guadalupe Hayes-Mota '08, SM '16, MBA '16 emphasizes the importance of implementing ethical frameworks when developing AI systems designed for use in healthcare. “The future of AI in healthcare not only needs to be intelligent,” writes Hayes-Mota. “It needs to be trusted. And in healthcare, trust is the ultimate competitive edge.”