We continue on our commentary on the new Trump 2.0 administration’s projected impact on healthcare, from the perspectives of changes expected in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its total domain over all segment of healthcare and wellness in the US. PLUS, AI’s impact on healthcare, with particular focus on consumers.
Trump 2.0: A Game-Changing Vision for 2025 (Continued)
United States Surgeon General
A few days ago, President Trump announced that he had made a decision on who would be his nominee for Surgeon General. He announced that Dr. Janette Nesheiwa would be his nominee for the position of Surgeon General.
First, let us briefly discuss the role of Surgeon General in the US, a role that normally does not get much attention from either consumers or private industry. We believe that image is about to change.
The United States Surgeon General is the nation’s leading public health advocate, providing guidance to the President, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the public on critical health issues. As the head of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, the Surgeon General oversees more than 6,000 health professionals who respond to public health emergencies and promote wellness. Their role includes raising public awareness through health campaigns and reports, setting priorities to address issues like tobacco use, mental health, and vaccination, and advocating for policies that improve the nation’s health. Historically, the Surgeon General has driven key public health initiatives, such as the 1964 report on smoking’s dangers and more recent efforts addressing opioid addiction and COVID-19. By combining leadership, education, and advocacy, the Surgeon General works to advance the health and well-being of all Americans.
Trump’s personal public statement “Dr. [Janette] Nesheiwat is a fierce advocate and strong communicator for preventive medicine and public health. She is committed to ensuring that Americans have access to affordable, quality healthcare, and believes in empowering individuals to take charge of their health to live longer, healthier lives.”
Dr. Nesheiwat is the daughter of Jordanian immigrants and was born in Carmel, New York. Her family moved to Florida in the 1980s and attended University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida, plus Stetson University in Deland Florida. She attended and graduated from American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine in St. Marten and completed her residency at University of Arkansas Medical Sciences in 2009. She is a board-certified physician in family medicine, and most recently was Medical Director of CityMD a New York based urgent care provider. She is also known for her commentary on Fox News since 2020, in part for her frontline experiences during COVID-19, something also President Trump recognized. . She is also a published author with her book Beyond the Stethoscope: Miracles in Medicine published this year.
What got our attention is that Dr. Nesheiwat has been advocate of getting vaccinations for COVID-19 and other infections diseases. She worked during the pandemic in New York, and The President’s commentary on “empowering individuals” to live better are a welcomed view.
I received the news of Dr. Nesheiwat from a close friend who has been reading our blogs on empowering consumers with AI. My friend literally quoted that part of “empowering individuals” in the text to me. As a 30-year veteran of healthcare and with our company, we think that time to empower consumers is here and now. We have those 13,000 a day new entrant to Medicare, and like the old T.V. show, some remember “we have the technology”.
Consumer Empowered with AI
We are again thrilled to see another Trump nominee focus on the consumer. The only way from her to change healthcare. There is no other way to change healthcare, from the trajectory we can see we as a country have been on since 1965. Today, we have to empower the consumer, and to do that we have to give the consumer more data.
With those 30 years of experience, I am not of the belief that AI has today, practical and mass scale or will be trusted in “treating” patients outside of very specific areas we have noted over and over and over again- Imaging, pathology, genomics, and a few other important but numerically small applications.
Later in this blog series we will talk about the (current and most assuredly from the real scientist) U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and AI, in particular recent comments by FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, MD, who talked about the agency’s role in regulating AI in actual healthcare. The short answer is that AI has a problem in directing patient care with the providers and all that requires FDA approval. This caution will not likely change in Trump 2.0 but maybe get worse.
This is why we have our focus our efforts on the review of the mass amount of DATA in EHRs, on behalf of the consumers, not the healthcare industry. We note in our “About us” (below) that there is 3,000 exabytes of consumer health data in the US EHRs alone.
As I was literally writing this blog, this headline from Modern Healthcare (link below) crossed my computer screen – Mount Sinai Health opens AI center for research, development. The article goes on to say that “Mount Sinai Health System has opened a $100 million building dedicated to artificial intelligence”. The key part of the story is this, with our own bold and underlined for emphasis.
The Hamilton and Amabel James Center for Artificial Intelligence and Human Health is dedicated to the research and development of AI tools that can be used across the eight-hospital system, Mt. Sinai said Monday. The facility is housed in a 65,000-square-foot building on New York City’s Upper East Side near the system’s main campus**. It will centralize Mount Sinai’s AI efforts in genomics, imaging, pathology, electronic health records and clinical care.**
We keep noting that there is gold in our EHR data, and the US Government via CMS of forcing interoperability is not only not working but creating duplicates of the same information, that is even harder to consolidate. The reality is also that most of the data that is transferable is acute data, that is also of less value.
For example, my own EHR data when I was in the hospital last (a top HCA Facility) in 2009 with some rare flu that even the CDC was consulted is of zero value today. Yet, because it is a Meditech hospital based EHR, will be one of the first things any search of my medical records will bring in. The valuable information, are my post COVID-19 interactions, annual physicals and test, that are more difficult to get. But I have access to all those patient portals, TODAY. Those are going to be way harder to get.
The Modern Healthcare article brings it all in context with this paragraph-
The AI center also will house Mount Sinai’s various genomics efforts including its Institute for Genomic Health and Division of Medical Genetics, where researchers are using AI and gene sequencing to treat cancer, heart problems and genetic disorders. The health system seeks to genetically sequence 1 million Mount Sinai patients within the next five years.
There is zero doubt that AI will transform healthcare. We are laser focused on first empowering consumers, then on having more and deeper data that is relevant to general wellness analyzed, and giving consumer feedback, not just acute or life-threatening diseases like cancer. We still see that AI is a long way from the “clinical” treatment of patients, or frankly assist the typical providers in particularly primary care visit. We have over 400 million annual primary care visits in the US today.
About HealthScoreAI ™
Healthcare is at a tipping point, and HealthScoreAI is positioning to revolutionize the industry by giving consumers control over their health data and unlocking its immense value. U.S. healthcare annual spending has reached $5 trillion with little improvement in outcomes. Despite advances, technology has failed to reduce costs or improve care. Meanwhile, 3,000 exabytes of consumer health data remain trapped in fragmented USA systems, leaving consumers and doctors without a complete picture of care.
HealthScoreAI seeks to provide a unique solution, acting as a data surrogate for consumers and offering an unbiased holistic view of their health. By monetizing de-identified data, HealthScoreAI seeks to share revenue with consumers, potentially creating a new $100 billion market opportunity. With near-universal EHR adoption in the USA, and advances in technology, now is the perfect time to capitalize on the data available, practical use of AI and the empowering of consumers, in particular the 13,000 baby boomers turning 65 every single day and entering the Medicare system for the first time. Our team, with deep healthcare and tech expertise, holds U.S. patents and a proven track record of scaling companies and leading them to IPO.
Noel J. Guillama-Álvarez
Chairman of the Board
OXIO Health, Inc.
