The Medical AI Floodgates Open, at a Cost of $1000 per Patient

By LUKE OAKDEN-RAYNER In surprising news this week, CMS (the Centres for Medicare & Medicaid Services) in the USA approved the first reimbursement for AI augmented medical care. Viz.ai have a deep learning model which identifies signs of stroke on brain CT and automatically contacts the neurointerventionalist, bypassing the first read normally performed by a general radiologist. From their press material: Viz.ai demonstrated to CMS a significant reduction in time to treatment and improved clinical outcomes in patients suffering a stroke. Viz LVO has been granted a New Technology Add on Payment of up to $1,040 per use in patients with suspected strokes.https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vizai-granted-medicare-new-technology-add-on-payment-301123603.html This is enormous news, and marks the start of a totally new era in medical AI. Especially that pricetag! Doing it tough It is widely known in the medical AI community that it has been a troubled marketplace for AI developers. The majority of companies have developed putatively useful AI models, but have been unable to sell them to anyone. This has lead to many predictions that we are going to see a crash amongst medical AI startups, as capital runs out and revenue can’t take over. There have even been suggestions that a medical “AI winter” might be coming. Hearing about layoffs at some prominent radiology AI companies. Suggests the AI bubble may be deflat...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Artificial Intelligence Health Tech AI Luke Oakden-Rayner Reimbursement Source Type: blogs