Happy Labor Day weekend from the Yahoo News health team! This week we’ve been busy cleaning out our fridges and double-checking our charcuterie stashes in light of the ongoing listeria outbreak linked to deli meat. But that’s not all we’ve been up to.

What our team has been interested in: These were some of the more under-the-radar topics that piqued our team’s interest this week:

• Kerry Justich explains why this lemon juice trend is a bad idea — even if you do want lighter sun-bleached locks.

• If you’re slouching in a beach chair while reading this, that’s probably OK. Natalie Rahhal explains why, when it comes to posture, straighter isn’t always better.

• Kaitlin Reilly shares how to start resistance training at any age — including some other options if pumping iron isn’t for you.

• If you find yourself struggling to make friends, Priscilla Blossom has some tips from experts on how to make it a little easier.

• I broke down a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll that asked Americans about their thoughts on in vitro fertilization — and got some feedback from fertility experts too.

What researchers have been studying: Here are some interesting new studies that came out this week:

• Researchers in the U.K. found that sleeping in on the weekends can be good for your heart health.

• A study published on Thursday identified a link between endometriosis (a condition impacting more than 11% of U.S. women and characterized by chronic pain, bleeding and fertility issues) and increased risk of heart attack and stroke.

• The popular weight loss drug Wegovy can help you do more than shed extra pounds — it can also help cut the chances of dying from COVID-19 by roughly a third, researchers revealed on Friday.

What happened in celebrity health: Celebrities make headlines for more than just fashion and films; they can call our attention to some important health topics too. Here’s what to know this week:

• Samantha Harris’s breast cancer is back 10 years after she underwent a double mastectomy. The former Dancing With the Stars co-host shares how she’s navigating the diagnosis.

• Richard Simmons’s cause of death has officially been ruled an accident, resulting from “sequelae of blunt traumatic injuries,” or complications stemming from injuries. The fitness guru known for his 1980s flair died on July 13.

• Former Real Housewives of Orange County star Vicki Gunvalson shared the scary symptoms she experienced when pneumonia progressed to a near-deadly infection.

• OK, so he’s not a famous actor or model, but Dr. Anthony Fauci is certainly a celeb in the health world! And last weekend it was revealed that the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases had been hospitalized with West Nile virus. Here’s what you should know about the disease.

And finally, these were some of the biggest headline makers in health and wellness this week.

FDA puts new age restrictions on tobacco sales

On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration increased the age restrictions on some tobacco sale requirements, which the agency hopes will curb the use of tobacco products by young people.

Beginning on Sept. 30, two new changes will go into effect:

• New photo ID requirements: Retailers will need to ask for photo ID and verify the age of anyone under 30 years old who wants to buy tobacco products, including e-cigarettes. Previously, the age requirement for photo ID checks was 27 years old.

• New vending machine limitations: Retailers won’t be allowed to sell tobacco products in vending machines “in facilities where individuals under 21 are present or permitted to enter at any time.” This restriction previously only applied to places where individuals under 18 years old were present or permitted.

“Today’s rule is another key step toward protecting our nation’s youth from the health risks of tobacco products,” Brian King, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said in a statement on Thursday. “Decades of science have shown that keeping tobacco products away from youth is critical to reducing the number of people who ultimately become addicted to these products and suffer from tobacco-related disease and death.”

CNN reports that 250 children become smokers every day, and 9 out of 10 daily smokers reported having their first cigarette by the age of 18.

A study published in JAMA on Monday found that U.S. heat-related deaths increased between 1999 and 2023, and particularly in the last seven years, from 2016 to 2023. Researchers note that this is interesting given that a study using data through 2018 found a downward trend in heat-related deaths — suggesting that there has been a reversal in the last several years.

Dr. Jeffrey Howard, a co-author of the new JAMA study, told CBS News that there are probably several reasons for the upward trend in heat deaths.

“It is likely that continued increases in average temperatures, the number of ‘hot days’ and the frequency and intensity of heat waves could be playing a role,” he said. “There is also a social and behavioral component as well, including differences in access to air conditioning, outdoor work, the number of unhoused individuals, and things like that.”

Last year was the hottest year on record as well as the deadliest — with 2,325 people in the U.S. alone dying from heat.

The study authors add that as temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, the recent trend in increasing heat-related deaths is likely to continue. They recommend that “high-risk areas” expand access to hydration centers and public cooling centers or other buildings with AC.

Eli Lilly announces new, cheaper way to purchase weight loss drug Zepbound

Eli Lilly announced on Tuesday that it will begin offering its weight loss drug Zepbound at a lower cost in an effort to make the drug more accessible. A month’s supply of the lowest dose will cost $399 — a little over a third of the $1,059 monthly price tag that was being charged regardless of the dosage.

The pharmaceutical company said it’s able to lower the cost by selling the drug in vials instead of a single-dose auto-injector pen — meaning patients draw the medicine out of vials themselves with a syringe, NBC News reports. Doses of the auto-injector pen will also still be available, but not at the new, cheaper price.

“These new vials not only help us meet the high demand for our obesity medicine, but also broaden access for patients seeking a safe and effective treatment option,” Lilly USA president Patrik Jonsson said in a press release.

But there’s a catch: The lower-cost doses will only be available through the company’s telehealth platform and won’t be covered by insurance. However, Lilly says this gives patients another option — including patients without insurance, those whose insurance won’t cover the drug, and people on Medicare or Medicaid who don’t qualify for Zepbound’s savings program.

This article contains affiliate links; if you click such a link and make a purchase, we may earn a commission.

Reading Niamh Campbell’s article on breastfeeding brought back painful memories for me (‘Like a cheese grater raking across my nipple’: why I kept trying to breastfeed for so long, 3 September). Nearly 43 years ago, I too found breastfeeding agonisingly painful. Unlike her, I never had access to a lactation consultant, and the only advice I was offered by health professionals was to wear a nipple shield, grit my teeth and persevere. I lasted four months before switching to formula, and from then on started to bond with my baby. All these years later, there’s still a slight feeling of shame that I “failed”.
Barbara Thompson
Sheffield

I can absolutely relate to Niamh Campbell’s experience. I gave up breastfeeding when my daughter was 20 weeks old. I had the same issues, which nothing prepares you for. I was in agony, with cracked, bleeding nipples, and had to supplement with formula. I envied mothers who had milk flowing like wine and contented infants. There were no lactation consultants then in my neck of the woods, and even had there been, I doubt they’d have been able to help.
Siobhan McGovern
Edinburgh

Immediately linking chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma patients who smoke to an appointment at a smoking cessation clinic significantly improved quit rates, a multicenter trial from Turkey showed.

Among nearly 400 smokers recruited from respiratory clinics, self-reported quit rates at 3 months reached 27% for those randomized to an immediate appointment at an outpatient smoking cessation clinic, as compared with 17% with usual care, which involved referral to a smoking quitline (P=0.014), reported Dilek Karadogan, MD, of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University in Rize, Turkey.

“Smoking cessation aid should be part of routine care in patients with chronic airway diseases,” she said at the annual European Respiratory Society (ERS) congress in Vienna. “Our study revealed a five-fold increase in quit rates with evidence-based smoking cessation assistance, and the rate of access to this help was higher in the immediate-appointment group than in the usual-care group.”

At 3 months, significantly more patients in the immediate-appointment arm had visited a smoking cessation clinic (75% vs 27%) and received evidence-based medication to help them quit smoking (69% vs 22%; P<0.001 for both).

In her introduction, Karadogan noted that a significant proportion of patients with chronic lung diseases continue to smoke tobacco even after being diagnosed with their condition. In the U.S., 38% of COPD patients and 21% of asthma patients are current smokers, according to 2013 data from the CDC.

Furthermore, said Karadogan, information is limited on the impact of standard brief tobacco cessation interventions — such as the “5A” method (ask, advise, assess, assist, arrange) — for smokers with COPD or asthma.

“We know that 60-70% of smokers have the desire to quit smoking, but only 3-5% of self-quitters achieve a prolonged abstinence,” said ERS-designated discussant Armin Frille, MD, of Leipzig University in Germany.

The current results, he noted, mirror findings from the Quit Smoking Lung Health Intervention Trial of patients undergoing lung cancer screening. In that study, 3-month self-reported quit rates reached 21% for those who received immediate telephone smoking cessation support and pharmacotherapy versus 9% with usual care — advice to quit and information on smoking cessation services.

Frille noted that the main limitation of the current study was that tobacco cessation wasn’t biochemically verified. And when he asked whether the quit rates were sustained at longer follow-up, Karadogan reported that the differences at 1 year remained significant, at 19% in the study arm and 12% in the control arm.

From November 2022 to June 2023, the multicenter trial randomized 397 adults from outpatient respiratory disease clinics in a 1:1 ratio. Patients were required to have a diagnosis of COPD, asthma, or bronchiectasis for at least 6 months and had to be current smokers. Patients were excluded if they had active psychiatric disorders, impaired cognitive function, or if they were already on a smoking cessation aid.

Both groups received brief smoking cessation recommendations. The intervention arm was immediately scheduled for an appointment at a smoking cessation outpatient clinic, where they would have access to free smoking cessation therapy, while the control group was advised to make an appointment at a clinic, the standard practice in Turkey.

Access to evidence-based treatment included initiation of pharmacotherapy approved for smoking cessation, such as nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) or bupropion (Zyban). At 3 months, rates were higher in the immediate-appointment arm both for NRT (41% vs 19% in the control arm) and for bupropion (27% vs 12%, respectively; P<0.001 for both).

The primary endpoint of self-reported quit rate at 3 months was analyzed by an intention-to-treat approach and conducted via telephone.

Baseline characteristics in most cases were similar, said Karadogan. Participants were an average age of 54, 33% were women, and they had a mean smoking history of about 38 pack-years . A majority had COPD (55%), while 42% had asthma, and 3% bronchiectasis.

A significantly higher level of education attainment was observed in the immediate-appointment arm, along with higher scores on the Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence and a greater forced expiratory volume in 1 second. Multivariable analysis that accounted for these differences showed that access to evidence-based cessation support was the only factor significantly associated with successfully quitting smoking (adjusted OR 5.65, 95% CI 2.89-11.03, P<0.001).

Operations at a company in Lithuania have been suspended after food agency inspectors were denied entry to the premises during an inspection.

The State Food and Veterinary Service (VMVT) reported that in August, when inspectors went to fish producer Almantika UAB, company officials would not let inspectors access the site.

Police officers were called by VMVT employees and they urged the producer to allow the planned official controls to be carried out, but company representatives still refused.

The VMVT reported that company officials said they should have been informed about the inspection.

The EU Official Control Regulation requires member states to carry out regular, unannounced risk-based official controls to detect fraudulent or deceptive practices. 

Food agency reaction
As VMVT staff could not assess the conditions of the ongoing activity, a decision was taken to stop the company’s operations.

Similar cases have been recorded in other businesses before, leading to legal proceedings.

Paulius Bušauskas, deputy director of VMVT, said it was important firms cooperated with the control authority so food safety and animal welfare can be ensured.

“If company representatives have questions about how we work, we are ready to explain and advise. However, disclosing to the entity about the planned inspection…is prohibited by the legislation of the European Union, on the basis of which we perform official controls. Only very specific and narrow exceptions are possible,” he said.

“We will not tolerate disrespectful behavior towards VMVT inspectors and we will use all means to ensure that employees are protected and feel supported while performing their functions for the state.”

Gediminas Gvazdaitis, director of the supervisory department of VMVT, said it was a unique case.

“Why is there an attempt to avoid the inspection? We cannot risk the health of consumers. The inspectors could not make sure that food safety and hygiene were observed in the company, so we had to take measures to protect against a possible threat,” he said.

“By obtaining a permit, the business undertakes to ensure the safety and quality of the manufactured product at all times, not only during the assessment. We hope for understanding and better cooperation in the future to protect consumers.”

After being suspended, a company can apply to resume operations. A restart of activity can only be approved after an official control has been performed.

Several outbreaks
Meanwhile, officials in the city of Klaipėda are investigating an outbreak that affected eight people.

Patients reported eating a tiramisu dessert at the same restaurant between Aug. 2 and 8. Seven of those sick were diagnosed with Salmonellosis.

An inspection of the restaurant did not reveal any food handling violations. The raw materials used to make the tiramisu were also checked, but no issues were found. Other samples were taken, including from a company that supplied some of the ingredients, with results pending. The restaurant was instructed to carry out cleaning and disinfection of the site and equipment.

Another outbreak in Taurage involved children at a camp site. Due to suspected gastroenteritis, several children needed hospital treatment.

The VMVT checked the company that supplied food to people at the camp. An inspection identified the risk of cross-contamination during storage and a lack of traceability for used food products.

The National Public Health Centre (NVSC) said eight people fell ill. The agency added the lack of hygiene measures by employees and children may have contributed to the spread of illness.

Finally, the Kaunas department of NVSC is conducting an epidemiological investigation into an outbreak at a hospital. The study is trying to find out if the cause of sickness in 24 people is the same and if it was caused by food eaten in the hospital. Patients are being interviewed and the results of laboratory tests on cases and food eaten are expected shortly.

(To sign up for a free subscription to Food Safety News, click here.)

Anyone can get COVID-19, also called coronavirus disease 2019, including children. Find out about the symptoms, testing and medical issues linked to COVID-19 in children. And learn how to help prevent COVID-19, especially in children at high risk of serious illness.

How likely is it for a child to become sick with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)?

Data tracking between 2020 and 2023 found that children made up about 18% of all people with reported COVID-19 in the United States.

While children are as likely as adults to catch the virus that causes COVID-19, kids are less likely to become seriously ill. From 2020 to the end of March 2024, children up to age 17 accounted for about 1.5% of people who needed to be treated for COVID-19 in the hospital.

But some children with COVID-19 need to be hospitalized, treated in the intensive care unit or placed on a machine to help them breathe, called a ventilator. Very rarely, COVID-19 can cause death.

Some health issues might raise a child’s risk of serious illness with COVID-19, such as:

• Having more than one chronic disease, including those of the heart, lung or nervous system.
• Not being up to date with COVID-19 vaccination.
• Having a weakened immune system.
• Being born before the due date, called prematurity.
• Having obesity.
• Having type 1 or type 2 diabetes.

This is not a complete list. Other health issues, such as sickle cell disease, may be linked to more-serious COVID-19.

Having more than one risk factor raises the chance of serious COVID-19. Age younger than 1 year or older than 12 also raises the risk. And if a medical condition isn’t under control, that can raise the risk of serious COVID-19.

A COVID-19 vaccine might prevent your child from getting the virus that causes COVID-19. It also may prevent your child from becoming seriously ill, having to stay in the hospital or dying of COVID-19.

How are babies affected by COVID-19?

Babies under age 1 might be at higher risk of serious illness with COVID-19 than are older children. This may be mostly due to the fact that babies born prematurely have the highest risk.

In general, the virus that causes COVID-19 doesn’t spread from the pregnant person to the unborn baby. Infants typically get COVID-19 from a sick caregiver after delivery.

Pregnant people can help lower an infant’s risk by getting the COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy. Some evidence suggests protection can pass to the unborn baby and continue after birth.

What are the symptoms of COVID-19 in children?

Children with COVID-19 may have serious or mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. Symptoms may show up from 2 to 14 days after contact with the virus that causes COVID-19.

The most common symptoms are fever and a cough, including a barking cough linked to croup. For many children, symptoms are like those of other lung and breathing illnesses, called respiratory illnesses, and may include:

• Sore throat.
• Stuffy or runny nose.
• Headache.
• Feeling very tired, called fatigue.
• Nausea, vomiting or loose stools, called diarrhea.
• Chills.
• Muscle aches and pain.

Testing can help figure out if the virus that causes COVID-19 is the cause.

COVID-19 symptoms also may include problems breathing or shortness of breath, as well as new loss of taste or smell.

Breathing trouble

Get emergency help right away if your child is working hard to breathe. Symptoms of breathing trouble include grunting, flaring the nostrils, or having the chest pull at the collarbone and rib with a breath. Other symptoms of trouble breathing are shortness of breath at rest; rapid breathing; or wheezy, noisy or raspy breathing. In babies, this may show as not being able to cry or feed.

Get emergency help for other symptoms of serious illness, such as:

• Fever higher than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) in a child younger than 3 months old.
• Problems swallowing, for example, drooling in children younger than age 3 and in older children, not being able to swallow or open the mouth fully.
• Skin, lips or nail beds that are gray or blue.
• New confusion.
• Trouble staying awake or waking up.
• Chest pain or pressure that is constant.
• Vomiting or diarrhea that doesn’t stop.
• Dehydration, which in babies younger than 3 month means fewer than three wet diapers in 24 hours.

This list doesn’t include every emergency symptom. If the child you’re taking care of has symptoms that worry you, get help. Let the healthcare team know about a positive test for COVID-19 or symptoms of the illness.

Testing for COVID-19

Testing for COVID-19 can help you quickly figure out if the COVID-19 virus is the cause of your child’s illness. Testing helps you act quickly to prevent serious illness in kids who are at higher than average risk. It also helps protect others who may be at high risk.

Test for COVID-19 if you know you or your child was exposed to the virus or if you have symptoms. Testing during times when many people in your area have COVID-19 can help stop the spread of the virus that causes the illness.

What is multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C)?

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a serious condition linked to infection with the virus that causes COVID-19.

With MIS-C, children have fever, blood markers of inflammation and serious disease throughout the body. Organs such as the brain, eyes, heart, lungs, kidneys, digestive system and skin may become inflamed. MIS-C symptoms are treated in the hospital as the illness runs its course.

MIS-C is rare. In 2023, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received 117 reports of MIS-C. Most of these children had no medical issues before getting MIS-C.

Symptoms usually show up in about 2 to 6 weeks after infection with the virus that causes COVID-19.

Symptoms of MIS-C include a fever that doesn’t go away, along with other symptoms:

• Vomiting.
• Diarrhea.
• Belly pain.
• Skin rash.
• Bloodshot eyes.
• Dizziness or lightheadedness.

Emergency warning signs of MIS-C include:

• Trouble staying awake or waking up.
• Difficulty breathing.
• New confusion.
• Gray or blue skin, lips or nail beds.
• Terrible belly pain.

If your child shows any emergency warning signs or is severely sick with other symptoms, take your child to the nearest emergency department or call 911 or your local emergency number. If your child isn’t seriously ill but shows other symptoms of MIS-C, contact your child’s healthcare professional right away for advice.

Most children get better quickly and don’t have any medical issues caused by MIS-C.

Staying up to date with COVID-19 vaccination offers protection against MIS-C. And most children who have had MIS-C can get a COVID-19 vaccine on schedule.

Can children who get COVID-19 experience long-term effects?

Anyone who has had COVID-19 can develop a post-COVID-19 syndrome. New symptoms or conditions that develop after infection with the virus that causes COVID-19 is more often linked to serious COVID-19 illness. But anyone who catches the COVID-19 virus can develop a post-COVID-19 syndrome.

Symptoms often include a high level of tiredness that affects day-to-day life. And some symptoms may get worse after certain activities.

Symptoms may relate to trouble with:

• Breathing.
• Trouble with thinking.
• Fast heartbeat.
• Sleep problems
• Digestive issues.
• Pain in the joints or muscles.

Depending on their age, children may have trouble explaining some of these issues, which may be difficult for healthcare teams to diagnose.

These symptoms could affect your child’s ability to attend school or do typical activities. If your child has post-COVID-19 symptoms that aren’t getting better, talk with your healthcare professional. Working with your child’s school, it may be possible to compensate for these symptoms.

Staying up to date with COVID-19 vaccines offers protection against post-COVID-19 syndrome.

What COVID-19 vaccines are available to kids in the U.S.?

The COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States are:

• Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine 2024-2025 formula, available for people age 6 months and older.
• Moderna COVID-19 vaccine 2024-2025 formula, available for people age 6 months and older.
• Novavax COVID-19 vaccine, adjuvanted 2024-2025 formula, available for people age 12 years and older.

In general, people older than age 4 with typical immune systems can get any vaccine that is approved or authorized for their age. And people usually don’t need to get vaccines from the same vaccine maker each time.

Some people should get all their vaccine doses from the same vaccine maker, including:

• Children age 6 months to 4 years.
• People age 5 years and older with weakened immune systems.
• People age 12 and older who have had one shot of the Novavax vaccine. They should get the second Novavax shot in the two-dose series.

Talk with your healthcare professional if you have any questions about the vaccines for you or your child. Your healthcare team can help you if:

• The vaccine you or your child got earlier isn’t available.
• You don’t know which vaccine you or your child received.
• You or your child started a vaccine series but couldn’t finish it due to side effects.

What can I do to prevent my child from getting COVID-19?

There are many steps you can take to prevent your child from getting the COVID-19 virus and spreading it to others.

• Get vaccinated. If the timing works out, a COVID-19 vaccine can be given to eligible children on the same day as other vaccines.
• Keep hands clean. Encourage frequent hand-washing with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Teach your kids to keep washing their hands until they have sung the entire “Happy Birthday” song twice, which takes about 20 seconds. Or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol. Have your child cover the mouth and nose with an elbow or a tissue when coughing or sneezing. Remind your child to avoid touching the eyes, nose and mouth.
• Clean and disinfect your home. Clean high-touch surfaces and objects regularly and after you have visitors in your home. Also, regularly clean areas that easily get dirty, such as a baby’s changing table, and surfaces and items that your child often touches.
• Get the air flowing. Use fans, open windows or doors, and use filters to keep air and germs moving out of your indoor space.
• Keep some distance. If possible, avoid close contact with anyone who is sick or has symptoms. Spread out in crowded indoor places, especially in places with poor airflow.
• Wear face masks. If you are in an area with a high number of people in the hospital with COVID-19, the CDC recommends wearing a well-fitted mask indoors in public. Don’t place a face mask on a child younger than age 2 or a child with a disability who can’t safely wear a mask.

Keep up with well-child visits and your child’s other vaccines. COVID-19 is just one of many illnesses that can be prevented with vaccination. Vaccines for children are timed carefully. Vaccines are given when protection inherited from the mother fades and the child’s immune system is ready, but before kids are likely to come in contact with the germs that cause real infections.

Following guidelines to protect against the COVID-19 virus can be difficult for kids. Stay patient. Be a good role model and your child will be more likely to follow your lead.

BOSTON – The ability to change how healthcare providers communicate with patients with artificial intelligence isn’t just about accuracy, transparency, fairness and data model maintenance, it’s figuring out how to meet personalization challenges.

What patients want to know and when adds a larger degree of complexity – one that challenges the healthcare AI industry to consider both expected and unexpected patient points of view, according to panelists Thursday at the HIMSS AI in Healthcare Forum. 

With the power to contextualize, and allow clinicians freedom from data entry to be more human in their interactions with patients, artificial intelligence can transform patient-physician interactions.

“To some degree, these impressive tools that are evolving far more rapidly than a health system can even contemplate how they get embedded, really position or provide a tremendous opportunity to personalize that dialog, what matters to that person, and advise and support them to make the decisions that are relevant to them,” said Anne Snowdon, chief research officer at HIMSS, the parent company of Healthcare IT News.

While the utility of AI technologies is an important part of the conversation about trust, mapping transparency, choice, autonomy and decision-making are critically important to patients.

“From that perspective, it’s starting to redefine and rethink care,” Snowdon, the panel’s moderator, said. Snowdon holds a doctorate in nursing.

Improving patient communications 

Snowdon was joined by Alexandra Wright, patient advocate and director of research at HIMSS, Dr. Chethan Sarabu, director of clinical innovation at Health Tech Hub of Cornell Tech, Mark Polyak, president of analytics at IPSOS, and Dr. Lukasz Kowalczyk, a physician at Peak Gastroenterology Associates, for a deeper conversation about what patients want from an AI-enabled healthcare experience.

“While healthcare is still figuring out the challenges of artificial intelligence hallucinations, AI can elevate conversations and build more trust,” said Sarabu, also a board member of the Light Collective, a no-profit organization that seeks to advance the collective rights, interests and voices of patient communities in health tech.

In his work with the collective, Sarabu said he heard during a patient-insight panel that one patient, who thought she was communicating with a very helpful nurse named Jessica at her clinic over the patient portal, expressed a lost sense of trust when she asked for the nurse in person at her doctor’s office.

“She just said she wished they had told her that it was a chatbot beforehand,” he said.

“You shouldn’t catfish your patients,” quipped Kowalczyk, a practicing GI specialist and an advisor at Denver-based Cliexa, a digital health platform.

But if a patient knows healthcare chatbots like Jessica are not real people, difficult circumstances for a patient could be made better with an AI’s ability to communicate compassionately. 

“Compassion fatigue is a real thing in healthcare,” Kowalczyk said. “It gets very hard sometimes, especially when you’re going through a day, and it takes one or two patients to really make it hard to step up for that next one.”

Large language models excel at transforming and translating information and describing patient concerns to clinicians, giving them “a moment to take a breath” and regain empathy, he said. 

“I think that those are the opportunities where patients feel that the AI is acting as an advocate for them, and it’s helping me understand who they are as a person better.” 

The dynamics of personalization

AI may not add to the patient’s vision of care. In different scenarios – predictive analytics, for example – it may offer information that patients do not want.

“Maybe some patients want more information, some may want less, or someone may want less information in an in-person visit, but they want more material to review afterward,” Sarabu said.

From a doctor’s perspective, “It’s hard to really personalize all the information and context and content for every single patient.”

According to Polyak, there are three elements of care – access to care, access to accurate information and speed of information. 

He noted that, among a panel of patients using ChatGPT, 16% were asking healthcare questions to reduce their healthcare costs. 

“[They] asked ChatGPT to provide them with different scenarios of how our physicians should approach their care based on what they had – in order to lower the cost.” 

“That was not something that I really expected, but it was mostly basically scenario generation that they would print out and bring” to appointments.

Sense of control also varies among patients. 

For patients and their families facing a health crisis, “information is really power,” said Wright. 

“Often, when you’re in these situations, it can feel very out of control,” she said. 

“And if you don’t quite understand your condition or don’t quite understand what’s going on, it can really feel like you don’t have control over what’s happening to you.” 

When the doctor is no longer in the room, and patients have questions, they are going to turn to search engines and ChatGPT for information, she said.

Context also plays a factor in the information patients want to control.

“When I was first there at the hospital, would I have wanted them to tell me my risk chance of survival? Probably not, because I don’t think it would have helped the situation,” Wright said.

“But then thinking now, if somebody was going to tell me about my risk of, let’s say, a future cancer, would I want to know if there’s something I could do to prevent that? Probably.” 

What the granular discussion suggested, said Snowdon, turns healthcare’s use of AI on its head: “How do we help people help themselves make those decisions, inform with a sense of confidence and [discover] what’s most meaningful to them?”

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.