{"id":390245,"date":"2026-04-13T18:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T18:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/390245\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T18:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T18:42:09","slug":"hospitals-chatbots-vinay-prasad-nurses-morning-rounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/390245\/","title":{"rendered":"Hospitals, chatbots, Vinay Prasad, nurses: Morning Rounds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT\u2019s free newsletter Morning Rounds.\u00a0Sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Good morning and happy Monday. Thanks for being here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hospitals are getting into the chatbot business\u00a0<\/p>\n

More and more these days, people are turning to chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude with questions about diet, exercise, health insurance \u2014 and in some cases, serious symptoms that would typically get discussed on a 911 call or at a doctor\u2019s office visit. As STAT\u2019s Katie Palmer reports, some hospitals are now trying to redirect those questions by building their own patient-facing chatbots that draw directly from existing medical records and can funnel patients toward care at their facilities. It\u2019s about patient safety, they say \u2014 and finding new business.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But hospitals aren\u2019t tech companies, and could face major liability if a chatbot fails and a patient is harmed. Read more<\/a> from STAT\u2019s Katie Palmer on how medical institutions are trying to catch up with commercial large language models.<\/p>\n

\u2018I am indebted to the federal workers who were brave enough to share their concerns and experiences, despite their legitimate fears of reprisal.\u2019<\/p>\n

That was STAT\u2019s own Lizzy Lawrence, speaking at the George Polk Awards on Friday, where she and many of my\u00a0brilliant colleagues won in the health care reporting category. Read all of Lizzy\u2019s important, groundbreaking FDA reporting<\/a>, along with our series American Science, Shattered<\/a> and MAHA Diagnosis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a hard time for journalists around the world. As Lizzy also said: \u201cI am privileged to work in such a collaborative, ambitious newsroom, where editors encourage reporters to chase essential health stories and not leave any stone unturned.\u201d Here, here.<\/p>\n

On positioning nurses as health experts<\/p>\n

Among the American public, trust in medical doctors is at its lowest point since the \u201990s, according to recent Gallup polling<\/a>. Nurses, on the other hand, have long been the most trusted profession on\u00a0a list of nearly two dozen, including police officers, teachers, clergy, judges, and more. A perspective published Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine<\/a> argues that this trust \u2014 which exists across political lines \u2014 should be harnessed for more effective public health messaging.<\/p>\n

\u201cNurse scientists represent a largely untapped resource in national health communication,\u201d the authors write. But despite the increased political clout<\/a> gained by nurses at\u00a0the height of the pandemic, they\u2019re still too often absent from public health discussions. The authors suggest that media training should be available to nurses, and that institutions should create more opportunities for nurses to be contacted as experts by journalists. That includes asking more doctors, when approached by the media, to recommend nurse scientists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Erectile dysfunction: more than a sexual issue<\/p>\n

It seems intuitive: If you ask people whether erectile dysfunction or heart disease is a more important medical issue, just about everyone will say heart disease. But as urologist Denise Asafu-Adjei explains in a new First Opinion essay, the truth is a bit more complicated. ED is an early marker and predictor of heart problems. On average, cardiovascular disease develops about two to five years after the onset of ED, creating what Asafu-Adjei sees as a critical window for intervention.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s past time to view this disease from a different lens,\u201d Asafu-Adjei writes. \u201cMocking or ignoring ED presents a major missed opportunity for men and for stewards of public health.\u201d Read more<\/a> on what the evidence says and what changes could be on the horizon.<\/p>\n

Landmines ahead for Vinay Prasad\u2019s successor<\/p>\n

A couple weeks ago, STAT\u2019s Helen Branswell wrote about the challenges that lie ahead<\/a> for whoever is\u00a0nominated to lead the CDC, which has been without a Senate-confirmed director since August. We\u2019re still waiting to hear what may happen there, but in the meantime, STAT columnist Paul Knoepfler wrote about the chaos<\/a> that awaits whoever fills another soon-to-be-vacant HHS leadership position: director of the FDA\u2019s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. (Current director Vinay Prasad is leaving<\/a> the agency at the end of the month.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe leader of CBER should not be a rubber stamp, but it may be a challenge just to survive six months in the position unless they are a yes-person,\u201d Knoepfler writes. Read more<\/a> of his analysis.<\/p>\n

What we\u2019re reading<\/p>\n

Flight path data shows how mosquitos target humans, Wired<\/a><\/p>\n

What STAT readers think about nutrition education in med school, STAT<\/a><\/p>\n

For many patients leaving the ICU, the struggle has only just begun, KFF Health News<\/a><\/p>\n

GAO report shows gap between scale of illegal vapes and enforcement, STAT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT\u2019s free newsletter Morning Rounds.\u00a0Sign up here.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,1541,521,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-390245","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}