Episode Details

AI flags esophageal cancer on plain CT; Rush hands chart abstraction to a vendor; AI firms sponsor MAHA Summit; Newsom vetoes prior authorization bill

The voices on this episode are generated, and so is the script, from the day's post at Physician in the Loop. Every fact in the post links to its source.

Read the post and its sources

A Chinese research group reported Tuesday in Nature Medicine that a model reading the esophagus on noncontrast CT outperformed all 17 radiologists in a reader study and was validated on 80,612 patients. The model flags esophageal cancer and high-grade precancer on the plain scan ordered for kidney stones and lung nodules. The validation covered 12 centers in three countries, and the model was then run prospectively on hospital scans and on 10,959 consecutive people in a low-dose lung screening program. The paper appeared one day after Alibaba released an abdominal CT model free on GitHub.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) press page lists nothing newer than a gene therapy approval on Thursday, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on Monday announced preliminary lab fee schedule rates. President Donald Trump on Friday announced an AI Force and a coming AI czar with no detail beyond a promise not to hinder the industry and a statement that the existing criminal and civil courts can handle bad behavior, Axios and Fortune reported; the announcement so far includes nothing on medicine. The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Summit on Sept. 29 is sponsored by OpenAI, Anthropic, Hims & Hers, Noom, Sword Health, Tempus, Prenuvo and Centene, among others, and sponsors receive dinner with the speakers, according to the summit's site and Becker's Hospital Review. In Sacramento, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday vetoed a prior authorization bill that had passed 64-4 and 31-0 and has not acted on four health-AI bills, with eight days left to do so.

Elsewhere, a survey of 13 countries found that 49% of respondents believe a person with no medical training but skilled with AI could do at least one physician task as well as a physician; DexCare bought Mila Health in the second front-door agent acquisition in a week; and Becker's Hospital Review reported on how health systems triage the AI features Epic ships by the dozen, in a piece in which Rush's chief information officer said on the record that a chart-review job went to a model and is not coming back.

In this episode

• EAGLE finds esophageal cancer on noncontrast CT with 90% sensitivity and 98.5% specificity and holds a 42% positive predictive value prospectively
• Rush moves five-person chart-abstraction job and $1 million contract to AI vendor; CIO says the job is not coming back
• OpenAI, Anthropic, Hims & Hers, Noom, Sword, Tempus, Prenuvo and Centene sponsor the Sept. 29 MAHA Summit; sponsors get dinner with the speakers
• Across 13 countries, 49% say an AI-skilled