Health Systems Action

Artificial Intelligence

Personalised Prevention: Fattening the Cow or Just Weighing It?

Introduction Despite being underfunded for over a decade, and now in “critical condition”, the UK’s National Health System (NHS) has significantly invested in personalised medicine. These initiatives include the pioneering 100,000 Genomes Project, genetically based cancer screening, and personalised prevention. Proponents argue these programmes will improve outcomes and reduce pressure on the healthcare system. Critics …

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Operational Failures in Primary Care: AI Solutions?

Clinicians thrive on solving their patients’ health problems The responsibilities of medical practice can be heavy, but despite the challenges and complexities, or perhaps because of them, clinicians generally find clinical work rewarding. High levels of workplace frustration and burnout currently reported in multiple countries and settings are not intrinsic to the clinical aspects of …

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AI and Large Language Models – Divine or Platonic?

In the journal NEJM AI, Peter Szolovits, a computer scientist and medical decision-making expert, describes generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) models as having “miraculous abilities” but points out that “science abhors miracles” and concludes that these models aren’t ready for clinical use. [Miracle: “an extraordinary and welcome event not explicable by natural or scientific laws and …

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Eagles, beagles and a moose – change comes to cardiology

This week I attended a webinar series hosted by the Cardiac Arrhythmia Society of Southern Africa (CASSA), taught by cardiologists from the University of Cape Town, focused on Essential ECGs. These are the ones you can’t miss – if you do, your patient might die! I surprised myself by getting the quizzes mostly right. Surprised …

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An Old German Philosopher Rescues AI Users

Advances in artificial intelligence have come at breathtaking speed but have outpaced most ordinary people’s ability to make productive use of these amazing technologies. Some people walk away disappointed because they use Large Language Models (LLMs) inappropriately, as if they were search engines, and get less than impressive results. A good answer to how to …

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The IQ of AI

Read an edited and updated (March 18, 2024) version of this article here, on  Insight Health Solutions – https://www.insight.co.za Do Google Gemini’s claims match their ambitious aims? Measuring human intelligence (“IQ”) is challenging, even controversial. As we enter the age of artificial intelligence (AI), in healthcare and everything else, how will we measure the “IQ …

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Solving the Twelve Language Problem in Healthcare

Over the years, I’ve used Google Translate where I had to, including on trips to China – and found it useful enough. But Google Translate is primitive compared to the ability of today’s generative AI applications to read and write fluently in multiple languages. When it comes to languages, my mom’s not bad for a …

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