Latest Posts
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UnitedHealth lawsuit over alleged AI-driven denials of care moves forward
In November 2023, the families of two deceased patients filed a proposed class action lawsuit in the US against UnitedHealth Group, one of the country’s largest health insurers, and its subsidiary naviHealth. They allege the companies used an AI tool called nH Predict to wrongfully deny elderly patients in Medicare Advantage plans coverage for care…
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Fairness and bias correction in machine learning for depression prediction across four study populations
A study found that standard machine learning approaches often exhibit biased behaviours in predicting depression across different populations. It also demonstrated that both standard and novel post-hoc-bias mitigation techniques can effectively reduce unfair bias, though no single model achieves equality of outcomes. The biases that were identified risk reinforcing structural inequalities in mental healthcare, particularly affecting underserved…
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New-Onset Illness Anxiety Disorder After Helicobacter Pylori Infection: A Case Report
In this interesting case study from 2024, a 21-year-old woman developed illness anxiety disorder (IAD), formerly known as hypochondria, following a Helicobacter pylori infection. In the case, even after the H. pylori infection was successfully…
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Mitigating the risk of artificial intelligence bias in cardiovascular care
Digital health technologies produce large amounts of data that can be used to train AI, which is transforming cardiovascular care. However, AI can become biased when the data used to train it comes from a…
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Research Frameworks towards Health Equity
AI has great potential in healthcare, but existing algorithms risk perpetuating and worsening existing biases, particularly racial and ethnic disparities. This master’s thesis, from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto and developed…
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Value of serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor and glial fibrillary acidic protein for detecting depression in patients with Helicobacter pylori infection
Depression is often associated with Helicobacter pylori and the success of its treatment. In this recent research paper, it was shown that people infected with these bacteria have lower levels of BDNF (a brain health marker considered a promising biomarker of depression) and higher levels of GFAP (a protein known as a marker of astroglia pathology in depression) in their blood, a change that is strongly related to depression symptoms. The researchers also found that a combined marker including BDNF, GFAP, gut hormone levels, and gastrointestinal symptoms scores was able to accurately predict depression in infected patients. These findings suggest…
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Guiding Principles to Address the Impact of Algorithm Bias on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health and Health Care
Algorithms are widely used in healthcare to support diagnosis, treatment, risk assessment and decisions about who receives resources. When they are biased, they can worsen outcomes for racial and ethnic minority groups and other marginalised populations. For example, an algorithm that used race to estimate kidney function gave higher results for Black patients, delaying…
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Doctors use problematic race-based algorithms to guide care every day. Why are they so hard to change?
Clinical algorithms are risk calculators and decision tools that doctors use every day, and many of them take a patient’s race into account. In Boston, for example, paediatrician Alexandra Epee-Bounya used a calculator to assess young…
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Using artificial intelligence on dermatology conditions in Uganda: a case for diversity in training data sets for machine learning
For AI to work fairly in healthcare, it needs to be trained on data that represents people from different parts of the world. This study, carried out in Uganda, tested how well an AI app called…
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Gender biases within Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT: Evidence, Sources of Biases and Solutions
AI is now used in many areas of our lives, from hiring and education to healthcare, but it often mirrors the prejudices that exist in society. This review brings together evidence on how AI systems, and…