| | | | |  | | By Ruth Reader, Erin Schumaker, Carmen Paun and Daniel Payne | Presented by 340B Health | | | | | |  Google's chatbot, Gemini, has had some hiccups but the company still hopes it can help transform health care. | Getty Images | | | “AI won’t replace doctors, but doctors who use AI will replace those who don’t.” Karen DeSalvo, Google chief health officer | | Google believes the future of health will be brighter with its artificial intelligence. It’s trying to convince the medical profession and the world. “We are at an inflection point in AI,” Karen DeSalvo, head of health at Google, said at the company’s annual Health Check-Up event Tuesday. Her goal is to make AI helpful in FitBit, YouTube, search and the doctor’s office. Last year, Google debuted a generative AI tool for doctors. Now, it’s not only expanding the capabilities of its AI for health care research and practice but also making a pitch to hospitals. — Imaging diagnosis: This month, Google added a large language model for diagnosing heart and lung conditions in chest X-rays to MedLM, its set of large language models for medical research. — Chatbot: Gemini, Google’s controversial and much-criticized answer to ChatGPT, is getting a health care version. Its most recent accomplishment is scoring 91 percent on a U.S. Medical Licensing Exam-style test. Google will also test Gemini’s ability to produce reports from CT scans and X-rays. — Doctor’s assistant: Articulate Medical Intelligence Explorer, or AMIE, is research AI that’s already outperformed doctors on empathy and is undergoing testing as a health system in-take assistant. — Skin Condition Image Network: In collaboration with Stanford University, Google is releasing a library of pictures containing diverse skin colors and conditions to help design AI dermatological tools. Finally, Google’s experimenting with a FitBit feature that offers personalized health advice using Gemini. Why it matters: Google is trying to shape the future of health care AI regulation through its involvement with the Coalition for Health AI. It’s also hiring former FDA officials. Google is keeping a close eye on the regulatory landscape. During the health care check-up event, a disclosure sat at the bottom of its various demonstration videos: “AI should not be a substitute for independent clinical judgment and should not be relied on for clinical decision making.” What’s next? Google plans to release data on its AI’s ability to read medical imaging in the coming months. Early results show the AI is as good or better than doctors at the task, according to the company.
| | | | A message from 340B Health: Support the 340B PATIENTS Act The 340B PATIENTS Act eliminates harmful big pharma restrictions on 340B savings that are vital for expanding health care and support for patients and rural communities in need. By restricting 340B pharmacy partnerships, drugmakers have siphoned billions from the health care safety net solely to bolster their profits. The 340B PATIENTS Act stops this damaging behavior. We call on Congress to support this vital legislation. Learn more. | | | | | | | 
Chappaquiddick, Mass. | Erin Schumaker/POLITICO | | This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. The Biden administration is taking applications for grants to fund connecting trails on the Great American Rail-Trail. The project aims to link Washington, D.C., and Washington state with 3,700 miles of continuous trails over the next few decades, according to the Associated Press. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com, Daniel Payne at dpayne@politico.com, Ruth Reader at rreader@politico.com or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com. Send tips securely through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp.
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Vint Cert is known as a father of the internet. | AP | If you’re not convinced of Google’s sway over tech’s advance in health care, here’s more evidence: Google’s vice president and chief internet evangelist, Vint Cerf, was NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli’s guest Tuesday at the agency’s headquarters in Maryland. He joined her for a talk on the promises and perils of AI in biomedical research and health care delivery. Cerf, who helped design the internet’s structure when he worked at the Defense Department from 1976 to 1982, echoed his support for one of Bertagnolli's key agenda items: collecting and sharing health data. “Sharing of that data is almost as important as giving blood,” Cerf said at the NIH event. Rewind: Bertagnolli has said she wants to make it possible for patients to easily permit researchers to use their electronic health records. But she acknowledged at the talk Tuesday that getting patients from underrepresented groups to submit health data voluntarily won’t be easy. Researchers need data from people of color and those who live in rural communities or who have low incomes the most to help improve poor health outcomes, but those groups also tend to trust scientists less, she noted. “We’ve got a social problem,” she said, adding, “Science isn’t going to fix this.” The way forward: Bertagnolli and Cerf agreed that incentives — for patients, doctors and researchers — to collect and share data could help. So would ensuring that researchers have the right tools and standards to make sharing efficient and useful. “All of those things are steps that NIH is in a unique position to take, I think, to show light in dark corners,” Cerf said. “I would encourage that, and I hope the legislators understand that this is an important way forward.” The bottom line: Congress hasn’t shown any willingness to pay for Bertagnolli’s more ambitious plans. The NIH is facing the prospect of a flat budget this year, a major change for the agency after a decade in which its funding rose an average of 5 percent annually.
| | | | A message from 340B Health: Support the 340B PATIENTS Act
340B hospitals are the backbone of the nation’s health care safety net, providing essential services to patients with low incomes and those living in rural America. 340B hospitals play a vital role in delivering 77% of Medicaid hospital care, providing 67% of the nation’s unpaid care, and offering comprehensive specialty services that otherwise might not be available. 340B helps lower health care costs and enable doctors, nurses, and pharmacists to provide expanded care for the benefit of their community—all at no cost to the taxpayer.
The 340B PATIENTS Act will end harmful drug company restrictions on 340B savings that are vital for protecting patients and communities. By restricting 340B pharmacy partnerships, big pharma has siphoned billions from the health care safety net solely to bolster its profits. The 340B PATIENTS Act stops this damaging behavior. We call on Congress to support this vital legislation. Learn more. | | | | | | | JOIN US ON 3/21 FOR A TALK ON FINANCIAL LITERACY: Americans from all communities should be able to save, build wealth, and escape generational poverty, but doing so requires financial literacy. How can government and industry ensure access to digital financial tools to help all Americans achieve this? Join POLITICO on March 21 as we explore how Congress, regulators, financial institutions and nonprofits are working to improve financial literacy education for all. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | | | |  Teens in the U.K. will need an older accomplice to get their smokes if a new bill is enacted. | Getty Images | U.K.’s ruling conservative party aims to give an old anti-drug approach another try in an attempt to end tobacco use: prohibition. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government introduced a bill today to phase in a ban on tobacco sales, barring children turning 15 this year, as well as those younger, from ever buying a cigarette, POLITICO’s Helen Collis reports. Older people will still be able to get their smokes, but the legislation will, over time, bar all residents from legally purchasing tobacco products. “If we want to build a better future for our children, we need to tackle the single biggest entirely preventable cause of ill-health, disability and death: smoking,” said Sunak. The bill also restricts vape flavors and packaging and limits how vapes are displayed in shops, moving them out of sight of children. Why it matters: Sunak announced his plan to introduce the bill last fall, noting that smoking causes 1 in 4 cancers in the U.K. and costs the country’s publicly funded health system some $20 billion a year. And 4 in 5 people start smoking before age 20, according to Sunak. New Zealand was the first country to enact a similar law, but a new government repealed it in February. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said he’d seek to convince people to quit tobacco, but that prohibition would lead to a black market and crime.
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