October 2025: Open Access in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management | AAHPM In the world of hospice and palliative care research, having access to trusted, high-quality information is key. That’s where open access publishing shines—removing barriers so anyone can explore impactful studies […]

Looking for the latest research in hospice and palliative care? Don’t miss October’s open access pick in JPSM! Read our blog post here. aahpm.org/blog/october-2025-open-a...

What a $2 Million Per Dose Gene Therapy Reveals About Drug Pricing Taxpayers and charities helped develop Zolgensma. Then it debuted at a record price, ushering in a new class of wildly expensive drugs. Its story upends the widely held conception that high prices ref...

Taxpayers and charities helped develop the gene therapy Zolgensma.

Then it debuted at a record price of $2M+ per dose, ushering in a new class of wildly expensive drugs. Its story upends the widely held conception that high prices reflect huge industry investments in innovation.

(Published Feb.)

Systematic Screening of Advanced Cancer Patients' Curability Perception: A Longitudinal Analysis - PubMed Only one in three patients with advanced cancer had an accurate understanding of their curability, with limited improvement over time. Systematic screening may provide opportunities to improve illness...

In 432 patients with advanced cancer, only one-third accurately understood their curability, with little change over time. Misperception was linked to Asian race, better well-being, and fewer symptoms. Systematic screening is needed

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40992638/

AI isn't replacing radiologists Radiology combines digital images, clear benchmarks, and repeatable tasks. But demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high.

In 2016 Hinton predicted that AI would replace all radiologists in five years. Ten years later, why hasn't it happened? This post is a great explainer.

www.understandingai.org/p/ai-isnt-re...

Spoiler alert: "... models achieving high accuracy (up to 99%) in tasks like skin cancer and infectious disease detection. However, challenges such as underrepresented skin tones in datasets, limited clinical validation, and infrastructural barriers currently hinder equitable implementation."

Dr Balfour Mount died yesterday. Our clinical and spiritual leader, he was the first to use the term “palliative care” and opened the Royal Vic PCU. He inspired all of us to work with energy and integrity . We are all a bit more lonely today. Godspeed, Bal Mount

AAHPM mourns the loss of Balfour Mount, MD—widely recognized as the father of palliative care in North America. His vision and compassion transformed care for patients and families facing serious illness. We honor his legacy.

Trust and Transparency Key for Leveraging AI to Expand Access to Precision Oncology | AJMC Artificial intelligence (AI) holds the potential to democratize precision oncology, but it must be implemented thoughtfully.

Trust and Transparency Key for Leveraging #AI to Expand Access to Precision #Oncology | AJMC

www.ajmc.com/view/trust-a...

#MedSky #AImedicine #AI #HealthAI #AIinHealthcare #MedTech

Stanford to students - learn to use AI!

Assignment: Provide a link to the chat session transcript with the AI tutor. The session should be 15-20 minutes and interactive!

The cover of the October 2025 issue of NEJM AI with "NEW ISSUE NOW AVAILABLE" above it

Volume 2, No. 10 of NEJM AI is now available! Here is a preview of the latest content: 

𝗘𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗹𝘀
Scoping Out Clinical Trial Emulation nejm.ai/4nnlrJY

#AI #MedSky #MLSky

Spoiler alert: "Existing studies show that implementing generative AI without tailoring for human factors and organizational contexts often results in underutilization and operational inefficiencies."

Spoiler alert: "... today's benchmarks reward test-taking tricks over medical understanding. We evaluate six flagship models across six widely used benchmarks and find that high leaderboard scores hide brittleness and shortcut learning."

The Illusion of Readiness: Stress Testing Large Frontier Models on Multimodal Medical Benchmarks Large frontier models like GPT-5 now achieve top scores on medical benchmarks. But our stress tests tell a different story. Leading systems often guess correctly even when key inputs like images are r...

arxiv.org/abs/2509.18234

Spoiler alert: Buyer beware.

Dr. Puchalski was honored with the Kathleen Curtin Spirituality in Mission Award, presented by the National Capital Area Ignation Volunteer Corp gwish.smhs.gwu.edu

Geriatricians Houman Javedan & Vicky Tang discuss Preoperative Assessments for Older Adults, emphasizing CGAs, frailty screening, and the Geriatric Surgery Verification program to optimize outcomes. #medsky

👉 Post: bit.ly/GeriPalEp375
😀 hosts @alexsmithmd.bsky.social | @ewidera.bsky.social

AI Will Soon Have a Say in Approving or Denying Medicare Treatments - KFF Health News A pilot program testing the use of artificial intelligence to expand prior authorization decisions in Medicare has providers, politicians, and researchers questioning Trump administration promises to ...

kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

Performance of Three Conversational Artificial Intelligence Agents in Defining End-of-Life Care Terms - PubMed <span><b><i>Background:</i></b> Conversational artificial intelligence agents, or chatbots, are a transformational technology understudied in end-of-life care. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> OpenAI's ChatGPT,...

We compared ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing on palliative care terms found ChatGPT most accurate (9/10) and comprehensive (8.5/10). Credibility was low (3/10) across all. Readability was poor (FRE 41.7; grade 14.1). Clinician oversight is needed to avoid misinformation.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40138176/

The @JointCommission + @CoalitionHealthAI dropped new guidance on Responsible Use of AI in Healthcare, laying out 7 core principles for safe, ethical AI adoption. Read it here: digitalassets.jointcommission.org/api/public/c...

Get private equity out of health care.

National Dementia Workforce Study: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society <em>Journal of the American Geriatrics Society</em> (JAGS) is the go-to geriatrics journal for clinical aging research including education, clinical practice and public policy.

ICYMI: A special collection of five articles about NDWS was recently published in @agsjournal.bsky.social. The open access papers cover survey questionnaire development, sample frame development, data collection, and more.

agsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

A copy of "What is Intelligence?: Lessons from AI About Evolution, Computing, and Minds" by Blaise Agüera y Arcas.

In "What Is Intelligence?", @blaiseaguera.bsky.social offers a radical new perspective on what intelligence really is, and how AI’s emergence is a natural consequence of evolution. Available #OpenAccess: mitpress.mit.edu/978026204995...

Some important findings in this paper:
1) Working with AI boosts the performance of people solving math, science & ethics questions
2) The biggest boost is for the hardest problems
3) High performers remain highest performing, but low performers gain more
4) People who are good with AI gain most

Spoiler alert: "Looking ahead, the most advanced organizations are already experimenting with agentic AI systems that can learn, remember, and act independently within set boundaries"

Sure, you could use AI to summarize papers and explain them at a level anyone could understand... or you can turn the abstracts into music videos for no reason.

The tools are obviously not perfect yet, but the disparate elements (consistent characters, lip syncing, etc.) are evolving fast

Spoiler alert: "Due to both robust model training and external validation against UCSF datasets, Woollie is an LLM that prioritizes data accuracy and safeguards..."

Final Call for Papers – Signal Through The Noise: What Works, What Lasts, and What Matters in Healthcare AI
September 25–27, 2025 | Harvard
A three-day hybrid conference hosted by the Division of Clinical Informatics at BIDMC.
Submission deadline is August 22, 2025 dcinetwork.org/aiconf25

No more ‘garbage in, garbage out’: U of T rolls out health data repository for AI researchers Hospitals, clinics, universities and other health-focused organizations routinely collect data on everything from spinal scans to sleep study results – but much of that valuable intelligence stays tuc...

🎉 👏🏽 Wonderful article about Temerty Centre for #AI Research and #Education in #Medicine (TCAIREM), University of Toronto's Health Data Nexus, which is fuelling #AI #Health research!

www.utoronto.ca/news/no-more...

#MedSky #AImedicine #AI #HealthAI #AIinHealthcare #MedTech

📰 'How to Integrate Medical Humanities into Your Palliative Care Practice' by Ian B. Kwok, MD; J. Redwing Keyssar, RN; Gayle Kojimoto, BA; and Michael W. Rabow, MD, FAAHPM
🔗 ow.ly/KaPa50WmBfu

Learn how integrating medical humanities can strengthen your palliative care practice and more.

Palliative Care Interdisciplinary Teams in Acute Care Hospitals and Cancer Centers: A Job for Sisyphus - PubMed Palliative Care Interdisciplinary Teams in Acute Care Hospitals and Cancer Centers: A Job for Sisyphus

Hospital executives are the main barrier for interdisciplinary palliative care teams

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39008415/