“Everyone deserves the chance to fly.” Like 22 million of my closest friends, I was flying after hearing these lyrics and seeing the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked over the Thanksgiving holiday. It wasn’t lost on the healthcare policy wonks in the audience that the Wizard of Oz seems destined to run Medicare and Medicaid. Will he need flying monkeys for that? In the One Thoughtful Paragraph below, I explain how other nominations and activities of the incoming administration have remarkable similarities to the film.
Other news that we didn’t have to travel down a yellow-brick road to find:
- The FDA held its first digital health advisory committee meeting about generative AI-enabled devices and released a comprehensive summary. GE Healthcare should pay attention — at its investor meeting, the company announced that it will embed AI in every medical device it makes over the next eight years.
- Routine data collection through structured patient screenings can help increase the use of SDOH and health-related social needs data, a compiled report of seven studies published by ASTP suggests.
- Patient Rights Advocate – a patient-focused hospital price transparency advocacy group – released its seventh semi-annual report, finding that hospitals’ compliance with federal price transparency rules decreased from 34.5% in February to 21.1% in November. The group claimed that this was due to weak government oversight in a letter to President-elect Trump and called on the incoming administration to strengthen enforcement.
“You can do anything.” This is what the stunningly talented Ariana Grande says as Glinda, the good witch, to Elphaba, the Wicked Witch, played by the unbelievably gifted Cynthia Erivo. It is also what President-elect Trump seems to be saying to his proposed leaders. Just like watching the colorful drama in Wicked – which is about a power shift from ugly but smart goats to pretty, popular people who dance and sing really well – we are all watching a story unfold about our changing reality. One of the newly named entertainers is David Sacks, who will be the White House AI and cryptocurrency “czar.” You may recall that during the first Trump administration, the White House team known as the Office of American Innovation was instrumental in spurring the federal government’s moves to mandate health data interoperability – an electronic, seamless exchange of patient data. It seems likely that David Sacks will be in a similar position to spur serious AI activity. Given the proliferation of AI-supported medical devices and the backlash against AI-supported insurance coverage decisions, how or whether David Sacks handles AI issues in the healthcare space will be closely monitored. It will take serious magic to oversee health AI innovation, so we hope David Sacks is talented enough to defy gravity.
