News from the AI & ML world
DeeperML - #healthcare
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@viterbischool.usc.edu
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References:
Bernard Marr
, John Snow Labs
USC Viterbi researchers are exploring the potential of open-source approaches to revolutionize the medical device sector. The team, led by Ellis Meng, Shelly and Ofer Nemirovsky Chair in Convergent Bioscience, is examining how open-source models can accelerate research, lower costs, and improve patient access to vital medical technologies. Their work is supported by an $11.5 million NIH-funded center focused on open-source implantable technology, specifically targeting the peripheral nervous system. The research highlights the potential for collaboration and innovation, drawing parallels with the successful open-source revolution in software and technology.
One key challenge identified is the stringent regulatory framework governing the medical device industry. These regulations, while ensuring safety and efficacy, create significant barriers to entry and innovation for open-source solutions. The liability associated with device malfunctions makes traditional manufacturers hesitant to adopt open-source models. Researcher Alex Baldwin emphasizes that replicating a medical device requires more than just code or schematics, also needing quality systems, regulatory filings, and manufacturing procedures. Beyond hardware, AI is also transforming how healthcare is delivered, particularly in functional medicine. Companies like John Snow Labs are developing AI platforms like FunctionalMind™ to assist clinicians in providing personalized care. Functional medicine's focus on addressing the root causes of disease, rather than simply managing symptoms, aligns well with AI's ability to integrate complex health data and support clinical decision-making. This ultimately allows practitioners to assess a patient’s biological makeup, lifestyle, and environment to create customized treatment plans, preventing chronic disease and extending health span. Recommended read:
References :
Ken Yeung@Ken Yeung
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Microsoft is making significant strides in AI innovation, with a focus on both experimental and practical applications. One notable project unveiled at Build 2025 is Project Amelie, an experimental AI agent designed to autonomously build machine learning pipelines from a single prompt. Powered by Microsoft Research's RD agent, Amelie aims to automate and optimize research and development processes in machine learning, potentially eliminating manual setup work typically handled by data scientists. Early testing has shown promising results, with Project Amelie outperforming current state-of-the-art benchmarks on MLE-Bench.
Microsoft is also applying AI to solve real-world problems in healthcare and weather forecasting. They have unveiled an AI-powered orchestration system available through the Azure AI Foundry Agent Catalog to streamline cancer care planning, which brings together specialized AI agents to assist clinicians with analyzing multimodal medical data from imaging and genomics to clinical notes and pathology. This system aims to automate parts of the tumor board process, making personalized treatment plans more accessible. In weather forecasting, Microsoft's latest AI model, Aurora, is able to provide detailed and accurate 10-day forecasts in seconds. In addition to these innovations, Microsoft is advancing its Windows AI strategy with native support for Model Context Protocol (MCP) on Windows 11 and the introduction of Windows AI Foundry. The MCP integration will bring Anthropic's protocol to Windows 11, enabling AI agents to connect with native apps, system services, and external tools. With its Windows AI Foundry, developers can fine-tune and run AI models directly on Windows PCs. These efforts aim to build a secure agentic future on Windows, fostering the development of AI agents within the Windows ecosystem. Recommended read:
References :
@ketteringhealth.org
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Kettering Health, a healthcare network operating 14 medical centers and over 120 outpatient facilities in western Ohio, has been hit by a ransomware attack causing a system-wide technology outage. The cyberattack, which occurred on Tuesday, May 20, 2025, has forced the cancellation of elective inpatient and outpatient procedures and has disrupted access to critical patient care systems, including phone lines, the call center, and the MyChart patient portal. Emergency services remain operational, but emergency crews are being diverted to other facilities due to the disruption. Kettering Health has confirmed they are responding to the cybersecurity incident involving unauthorized access to its network and has taken steps to contain and mitigate the breach, while actively investigating the situation.
The ransomware attack is suspected to involve the Interlock ransomware gang, which emerged last fall and has targeted various sectors, including tech, manufacturing firms, and government organizations. A ransom note, viewed by CNN, claimed the attackers had secured Kettering Health's most vital files and threatened to leak stolen data unless the health network began negotiating an extortion fee. In response to the disruption, Kettering Health has canceled elective procedures and is rescheduling them for a later date. Additionally, the organization is cautioning patients about scam calls from individuals posing as Kettering Health team members requesting credit card payments and has halted normal billing calls as a precaution. The incident highlights the increasing cybersecurity challenges facing healthcare systems. According to cybersecurity experts, healthcare networks often operate with outdated technology and lack comprehensive cybersecurity training for staff, making them vulnerable to attacks. There is a call to action to invest in healthcare cybersecurity, with recommendations for the government and its partners to address understaffed healthcare cyber programs by tweaking federal healthcare funding programs to cover critical cybersecurity expenditures, augmenting healthcare cybersecurity workforces and incentivizing cyber maturity. Recommended read:
References :
@www.marktechpost.com
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OpenAI has introduced HealthBench, a new open-source benchmark designed to evaluate AI performance in realistic healthcare scenarios. Developed in collaboration with over 262 physicians, HealthBench uses 5,000 multi-turn conversations and over 48,000 rubric criteria to grade AI models across seven medical domains and 49 languages. The benchmark assesses AI responses based on communication quality, instruction following, accuracy, contextual understanding, and completeness, providing a comprehensive evaluation of AI capabilities in healthcare. OpenAI’s latest models, including o3 and GPT-4.1, have shown impressive results on this benchmark.
The most provocative finding from the HealthBench evaluation is that the newest AI models are performing at or beyond the level of human experts in crafting responses to medical queries. Earlier tests from September 2024 showed that doctors could improve AI outputs by editing them, scoring higher than doctors working without AI. However, with the latest April 2025 models, like o3 and GPT-4.1, physicians using these AI responses as a base, on average, did not further improve them. This suggests that for the specific task of generating HealthBench responses, the newest AI matches or exceeds the capabilities of human experts, even with a strong AI starting point. In related news, FaceAge, a face-reading AI tool developed by researchers at Mass General Brigham, demonstrates promising abilities in predicting cancer outcomes. By analyzing facial photographs, FaceAge estimates a person's biological age and can predict cancer survival with an impressive 81% accuracy rate. This outperforms clinicians in predicting short-term life expectancy, especially for patients receiving palliative radiotherapy. FaceAge identifies subtle facial features associated with aging and provides a quantifiable measure of biological aging that correlates with survival outcomes and health risks, offering doctors more objective and precise survival estimates. Recommended read:
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