Epic’s AI Fail; Controversial Alzheimer’s Marketing; No Good COVID Drugs

Welcome to the latest edition of Investigative Roundup, highlighting some of the best investigative reporting on healthcare each week.

Several of Epic’s AI Algorithms Deliver Inaccurate Info to Hospitals

Predictive tools developed by electronic health record giant Epic Systems are meant to help providers deliver better patient care. However, several of the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are delivering inaccurate information to hospitals when it comes to seriously ill patients, a STAT investigation revealed.

Employees at several major health systems told STAT that they were “particularly concerned” about Epic’s algorithm for predicting sepsis. The algorithm “routinely fails to identify the condition in advance, and triggers frequent false alarms,” the outlet reported.

Epic’s algorithm for predicting sepsis is one of about 20 developed by the company, STAT reported. Experts said in published research and interviews with STAT that they’ve also seen issues with a number of other algorithms, including those for predicting patients’ length of stay and chances of becoming seriously ill.

“Taken together, their findings paint the picture of a company whose business goals — and desire to preserve its market dominance — are clashing with the need for careful, independent review of algorithms before they are used in the care of millions of patients,” STAT wrote.

Further, the STAT investigation found that Epic has paid some health systems as much as $1 million in part due to their adoption of predictive algorithms developed by the company or others. “Those payments may create a conflict between duties to deliver the best care to patients and preserve their bottom lines,” STAT wrote.

Epic, however, defended its testing and distribution of AI products. The company told STAT its incentives are meant to reward the implementation of technologies that can improve care. Epic further said that some of the published studies that are critical of its sepsis algorithm are not due to underlying problems with its performance, rather differences in the way institutions define the onset of the life-threatening condition.

Biogen’s Controversial Alzheimer’s Marketing Push

As Biogen and Eisai face criticism around their new Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab (Aduhelm), the partners have launched a controversial marketing campaign that targets consumers already worried about slips in memory, Kaiser Health News reported.

Questions on an online “symptoms quiz” include how often someone loses their train of thought or feels more anxious than is typical, KHN reported. They also include questions about how often someone struggles to come up with a word, asks the same questions, or gets lost.

“No matter the answers, however, it directs quiz takers to talk with their doctors about their concerns and whether additional testing is needed,” KHN wrote.

While some of the concerns can be valid, “this clearly does overly medicalize very common events that most adults experience in the course of daily life: Who hasn’t lost one’s train of thought or the thread of a conversation, book, or movie? Who hasn’t had trouble finding the right word for something?” Jerry Avorn, MD, of Harvard Medical School, told KHN.

The marketing campaign has been called misleading by some, KHN reported. And it comes as critics of the drug point to a lack of definitive evidence that it slows the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, at a staggering cost of $56,000 per year.

Still No Good Drugs for COVID-19

Well over a year into the pandemic — and with vaccines taking center stage — effective and easy-to-use drugs to treat COVID-19 remain elusive, the Wall Street Journal reported.

In the U.S., 10 drugs have been cleared or recommended for use, WSJ reported. However, two of those drugs had their authorizations rescinded, and a third had its shipments paused due to ineffectiveness against new variants.

“We’re really limited, to be honest,” Daniel Griffin, MD, chief of infectious disease at healthcare provider network ProHealth New York, told WSJ. “We do not have any dramatic treatments.”

Factors that have contributed to the dearth of drugs to treat COVID have included the federal government’s focus on quickly developing vaccines as well as a lack of drug research on coronaviruses, even though there have been previous outbreaks, WSJ reported.

Additionally, “Scattered U.S. clinical trials competed against each other for patients,” according to WSJ wrote. And, “When effective yet hard-to-administer drugs were developed, a fragmented American healthcare system struggled to deliver them to patients.”

However, the need for drugs to treat COVID remains. That’s especially true as vaccination rates in many parts of the U.S. — and in other parts of the world — remain low. The continued rise of the highly transmissible Delta variant is also contributing to the need.