Hospitals Are Letting AI Bots Named 'Art' and 'Penny' Make Decisions About Your Health Care

If you visited a hospital recently, there's a growing chance an AI was involved in your care and nobody told you.

At the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas this week, the biggest names in health tech revealed a wave of AI "agents" that are already working inside hospitals. Epic Systems, which makes the software most American hospitals run on, introduced three AI agents with adorably non-threatening names: "Art" writes doctors' notes, "Penny" handles billing and fights insurance denials, and "Emmie" answers patient questions and books appointments.

Oracle launched its own AI that drafts physician notes across 30 medical specialties and suggests what doctors should do next with patients. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are all piling in with their own healthcare AI bots too.

Here's the problem: almost none of these tools have gone through rigorous clinical validation. That means they're being deployed in one of the highest-stakes environments imaginable, your health, without the kind of testing we'd require for a new medication or medical device.

Experts at the conference raised the alarm, asking a simple but uncomfortable question: just because AI can write a doctor's note doesn't mean it should. At least not until someone proves it won't get things dangerously wrong.

As reported by STAT News.

Source: STAT News