Friday Five: ChatGPT scores again; Amazon’s drone-delivered drugs; Medtonic-La Poste en route to digitalising healthcare; and more (20 October 2023)

Friday Five

By: Tina Tan

Ref: Friday Five Desk

Published: 10/20/2023

Meds take flight with Amazon

Amazon’s same-day drone delivery service, Prime Air, will also be dispatching medications to customers - albeit only to residents of one city in Texas.
In conjunction with news that Prime Air is expanding its services to more cities in the US, as well as the UK and Italy, Amazon Pharmacy said residents of College Station, Texas, could opt in to have their meds delivered by drone within 60 minutes of placing their order online.
Amazon Pharmacy customers living in College Station can access the service at no additional cost.
The move aligns with Amazon’s overriding mission to “make things that are easy, easier” for its customers - in healthcare, this means bringing down any barriers preventing patients from getting their medications, among other things, said Neil Lindsay, SVP of Amazon Health Service, at the recent HLTH conference.
To get more details on what Amazon’s health strategy is, see Spotlight On: HLTH2023 - Why Amazon is making - not taking - things easy in healthcare.

Another win over docs for ChatGPT

OpenAI's large language model ChatGPT has demonstrated the potential to be better than doctors at following recognised treatment standards for clinical depression, according to a recent study.
The study assessed the therapeutic approaches recommended by ChatGPT for different cases of mild and severe major depression, versus the recommendations by over 1,200 primary care doctors in France. In all cases, ChatGPT-4’s recommendations were in line with clinical guidelines.
Researchers also suggested that ChatGPT could enhance decision making in primary healthcare without any gender or social class biases sometimes seen in the doctor-patient relationship.
Click here to read some industry and investor perspectives on the impact genAI will have on tech, healthtech and pharma players in the digital health ecosystem.

Sounding out diabetes

Your smartphone could soon become a screening tool for type 2 diabetes just by listening to your voice for a few seconds, findings from a recent study suggest.
Klick Labs has built an AI model that uses vocal biomarkers and basic data relating to age, sex, height and weight to work out if an individual is likely to have type 2 diabetes.
The team developed those vocal biomarkers from more than 18,000 voice recordings of individuals with and without the condition. Their model demonstrated 89% accuracy in detecting type 2 diabetes in women and 86% in men.
The voice technology has the potential to remove barriers hampering current methods of detection, including time, cost and the need to travel, according to Klick.

GE’s monitoring tech could be more help, less hindrance

GE HealthCare’s newly FDA-cleared Portrait Mobile continuous monitoring system has demonstrated in a study that it could improve management of post-surgical patients, while minimising alarm fatigue.
The key advantages of Portrait Mobile is its wearable design which means patients are not tethered to their beds; but the system also uses advanced algorithms to optimise actionable alarms while minimising false ones, leading to reduced alarm rates.
The end goal is to address alarm fatigue, which is particularly prevalent among clinical staff working in high- acuity care settings.
FirstWord has launched a snap-poll to gauge physicians’ attitudes towards such continuous monitoring technologies - look out for our results next week.

Medtronic and La Poste pair up

Medtech giant Medtronic is partnering up with La Poste, better known as France’s biggest postal service operator, to leverage their respective expertise in AI and data analytics to improve patient journeys.
The first initiative from this partnership will focus on a digital and analytical platform for coordinating patient journeys and utilising data to optimise care. The platform will offer a wide range of digital services, including telemonitoring and telecare across several medical conditions.
The platform will soon include patient management and e-health services, allowing new players in the healthcare industry to leverage its functionalities to develop and integrate innovative services to improve patient journeys, said the companies.
La Poste launched its Health & Autonomy division in June. The group says its long history serving the French public sector has enabled it to develop a robust structure to apply its expertise in physical and digital logistics to the healthcare system.