Episodes

The World Health Organization recently issued a statement expressing concern about artificial intelligence in health care. Mayo Clinic’s Chief Information Officer Cris Ross, who’s been leading innovation projects for over 30 years, says “perhaps” we should be worried about ChatGPT.

“These technologies are value-neutral but their usage is not necessarily value-neutral. Bad people can use good technology for bad purposes. So I think there’s a very robust debate about whether these technologies should be regulated, whether they can be regulated, and if they are regulated, how we should do that,” says Ross.

Listen in as he takes hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter through this brave new world that promises to affect every part of health care.

As many Americans start the summer stressed about their physiques and health, there are important developments. Drug-makers report successful mid-stage trials for oral compounds that could soon join the injectable prescription medication to treat obesity that’s already on the market.

Dr. Jamy Ard, president-elect of The Obesity Society, says he believes oral obesity medications offer new options for those not comfortable with an injectable drug and for those who suffer adverse side effects from current offerings. He also believes more choices will lower prices for consumers.

“I think we’re at a watershed moment, this is really sort of an inflection point if you will, in thinking about the potential change in the landscape and how we conceptualize treatment of obesity. For the longest [time], a lot of the basic thinking about how we treat obesity was rooted in it was just a calorie imbalance…people were eating too much and exercising too little. As you know, that clearly has not worked,” says Dr. Ard.

He shares more insights on “Conversations on Health Care” with hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter.

Dr. Vivian Lee, an author and senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, is impressed by a study that found a large majority of patients responded in a favorable way when a pediatrician shared climate change details during well-child visits.

She joins hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter to explain why we need health care providers and health systems to step up to do more about the undeniable risks from climate change. Listen in as they discuss her perspective and her book, “ The Long Fix: Solving America’s Health Care Crisis with Strategies that Work for Everyone.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just updated its ventilation guidance on helping prevent indoor transmission of the virus that causes COVID. It includes a recommendation to get at least five air changes per hour of clean air in occupied spaces.

Dr. Joseph G. Allen and other experts have been advocating for this guidance even before the pandemic. He’s the associate professor and director of the Healthy Buildings Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Dr. Allen tells “Conversations on Health Care,” that “Making indoor air healthier came into the mainstream during the COVID-19 pandemic. New ventilation targets from the CDC are a key advancement of that work and are a historic public health achievement that can help normalize health-based indoor air quality standards. This new guidance can help mitigate indoor transmission of viruses like SARS-CoV-2 and influenza, and also help against other airborne hazards such as wildfire smoke and allergens.”

Hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter talked to Dr. Allen last year and we’re sharing the episode again to highlight these important issues.

Today, as the United States officially ends the COVID public health emergency, we know too many Americans continue to deal with the aftereffects of the pandemic, including mental health and substance abuse challenges.

Miriam Delphin-Rittmon, Ph.D., serves as Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

She joins hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter to explain plans for dealing with the fact there are more Americans dying of drug overdoses now than at any time in modern history. Research also shows over 5 million Americans are struggling with an opioid addiction.

Philip Zelikow, co-author of the new book “Lessons from the COVID War,” has an important finding as the U.S. still grapples with the tough questions from the pandemic:

“We point out in the report that community health workers can play this extraordinary role…where we had them [during the pandemic], they were really effective and that’s like a huge innovation that should punch out to us as a lesson from this war and can have a dramatic effect in America,” says Zelikow.

He also explains to Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter that “to this day, most patients who get COVID are not being properly treated with available medications.” Zelikow concludes a lack of preparedness is one of the main reasons the country performed so badly during the past three years.