How many humans does it take to run healthcare AI?

Welcome to the first ever Health AI Roundup!

We’re kicking off with the latest AI developments in healthcare: a tool that estimates your biological age from your face, a chatbot that’s become the therapist for millions, and new research studying AI’s ability to handle complex genomic data. But with growing costs and resource demands, is AI delivering on its promise of efficiency? Let’s explore.

📢 Headlines

Healthcare AI, Intended to Save Money, Turns Out to Require a Lot of Expensive Humans (CBS News) 

Maintaining AI systems in healthcare is no small feat—Stanford Health Care needed 115 human hours and nearly a year to audit just two models for fairness and reliability. This raises pressing questions about the cost-effectiveness and value of AI in its current form.

What Your 'Face Age' Can Tell Doctors About Your Health (WSJ) 

FaceAge, an AI model trained on a vast dataset of photos, analyzes facial features to estimate biological age. In a study, researchers found that the model provided more accurate predictions about cancer patients’ survival than doctors.

Character.ai: Young people turning to AI therapist bots (BBC)

The "Psychologist" chatbot on Character.ai has handled 78 million messages, offering emotional support when human therapy feels out of reach. But experts caution against relying too heavily on bots that may oversimplify complex mental health needs.

💸 Funding

Bluenote raises $10M to streamline regulatory workflows for life sciences companies with AI.

🧪 Research Spotlight

A new study introduces a conversational AI tool, AI-HOPE, designed to integrate clinical and genomic data for precision medicine research.

• Using large language models, the tool allows precision medicine researchers to conduct data analyses through natural language commands without requiring programming skills.

• Case studies, including one on colorectal cancer, showed it can identify genetic mutations linked to disease progression and treatment outcomes.

Read the preprint here.

💻 Job Opportunities in Health AI

Senior Gen AI Product Manager, Digital Health at Samsung Research America

Head of ML Infrastructure at Hippocratic AI

Machine Learning Science Manager at Abridge

Health AI Scientist at University of Minnesota

That’s all for this week 👋 See you next time with insights from the JP Morgan Health Care Conference.