Connect with us

News

In Harvard study, AI offered more accurate diagnoses than emergency room doctors

info

Published

on

GettyImages 104509077.jpg

A new study examines how large language models perform in a variety of medical contexts, including real emergency room cases — where at least one model seemed to be more accurate than human doctors.

The study was published this week in Science and comes from a research team led by physicians and computer scientists at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The researchers said they conducted a variety of experiments to measure how OpenAI’s models compared to human physicians.

In one experiment, researchers focused on 76 patients who came into the Beth Israel emergency room, comparing the diagnoses offered by two attending physicians to those generated by OpenAI’s o1 and 4o models. These diagnoses were assessed by two other attending physicians, who did not know which ones came from humans and which came from AI.

“At each diagnostic touchpoint, o1 either performed nominally better than or on par with the two attending physicians and 4o,” the study said, adding that the differences “were especially pronounced at the first diagnostic touchpoint (initial ER triage), where there is the least information available about the patient and the most urgency to make the correct decision.”

In Harvard Medical School’s press release about the study, the researchers emphasized that they did not “pre-process the data at all” — the AI models were presented with the same information that was available in the electronic medical records at the time of each diagnosis.

With that information, the o1 model managed to offer “the exact or very close diagnosis” in 67% of triage cases, compared to one physician who had the exact or close diagnosis 55% of the time, and to the other who hit the mark 50% of the time.

“We tested the AI model against virtually every benchmark, and it eclipsed both prior models and our physician baselines,” said Arjun Manrai, who heads an AI lab at Harvard Medical School and is one of the study’s lead authors, in the press release.

To be clear, the study didn’t claim that AI is ready to make real life-or-death decisions in the emergency room. Instead, it said the findings show an “urgent need for prospective trials to evaluate these technologies in real-world patient care settings.”

The researchers also noted that they only studied how models performed when provided with text-based information, and that “existing studies suggest that current foundation models are more limited in reasoning over nontext inputs.”

Adam Rodman, a Beth Israel doctor who’s also one of the study’s lead authors, warned the Guardian that there’s “no formal framework right now for accountability” around AI diagnoses, and that patients still “want humans to guide them through life or death decisions [and] to guide them through challenging treatment decisions”.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

News

2027: Nigerians tired of Tinubu's failed govt – Adebayo

info

Published

on

The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, Adewole Adebayo, says Nigerians are tired of President Bola Tinubu and his 'failed government'.

Adebayo spoke on Tuesday while fielding questions in an interview on Trust TV.

According to Adebayo, Nigeria is in a critical and dangerous state due to the lack of trustworthy authority.

"Nigerians are tired of Tinubu and his failed government. He has taken the cake in terms of disastrous government.

"Because in 2015, they had gotten tired of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and its boast that they would rule for 60 years. They were not satisfied with President Goodluck Jonathan then, and they blindly went with change.

"At the end of the day, the government that came under Muhammadu Buhari was worse than that of Jonathan, and of course, Tinubu has taken the cake in terms of disastrous government.

"Politicians are vicious people. That is why everybody wants to be president. So when you have ambition, you can expect that ego is also involved.

"For someone to wake up in the morning and say, "I want to be president of Nigeria, he must have a bit of ego," he said.

2027: Nigerians tired of Tinubu’s failed govt – Adebayo

Continue Reading

News

Bauchi Guber: APM sues INEC, PRP, Buba over candidacy

info

Published

on

The Allied Peoples Movement (APM) has sued the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) and Senator Shehu Buba Umar over his eligibility to contest the 2027 Bauchi State governorship election on the platform of the PRP.

The party is asking the Federal High Court in Bauchi to nullify Buba’s nomination, alleging that his participation in the PRP governorship primary violated provisions of the Electoral Act 2026.

The APM’s legal adviser, Barrister Jidauna Tula, disclosed this while briefing journalists in Bauchi, saying the suit was filed to seek judicial interpretation of the law governing party membership registers and eligibility for primary elections.

The case, with suit number FHC/BAU/CS/68/2026, seeks the enforcement of Sections 77(4), 77(5) and 77(6) of the Electoral Act 2026.

According to Tula, Buba had earlier participated in the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship primary before subsequently emerging as the PRP’s candidate for the 2027 election.

The APM contends that Buba’s name was absent from the PRP membership register submitted to INEC within the period prescribed by law, raising questions about his eligibility to participate in the party’s governorship primary.

In its originating summons, the party is asking the court to determine whether Buba’s participation in the PRP primary held on May 25, 2026, and his emergence as the party’s governorship candidate were lawful, considering the provisions of the Electoral Act.

It also wants the court to determine whether Buba was eligible to participate in the primary when his name was allegedly missing from the membership register submitted by the PRP to INEC within the statutory period.

The APM further asked the court to determine whether Buba’s continued membership of the APC at the time the PRP submitted its membership register, as alleged by the party, affected his eligibility to participate in the PRP primary.

The party is also seeking clarification on whether the PRP complied with Section 77(4) of the Electoral Act by submitting its membership register to INEC on or before May 10, 2026, ahead of its governorship primary conducted on May 25.

It further wants the court to determine whether the PRP could rely on any membership register other than the one submitted to INEC within the statutory period to establish Buba’s eligibility.

The APM is challenging INEC’s publication of Buba’s name as the PRP governorship candidate on October 10, 2026, arguing that the commission should not retain his name if the court finds that his participation in the primary and subsequent nomination contravened the law.

The party is consequently seeking a declaration that the publication of Buba’s name as the PRP candidate is unlawful, null and void.

It is also asking the court to order INEC to remove Buba’s name from the final list of candidates for the 2027 Bauchi governorship election published on October 10, 2026.

Explaining the legal basis of the suit, Tula said Section 77(4) of the Electoral Act 2026 requires political parties to submit their membership registers to INEC at least 21 days before their primaries, congresses or conventions.

He said Section 77(5) governs eligibility in relation to the applicable membership register, while Section 77(6) restricts political parties from using a different register from the one submitted to INEC within the stipulated period.

Tula alleged that because the PRP was required to submit its register by May 10, 2026, and Buba’s name was allegedly absent from the document, his participation in the party’s primary on May 25 raised questions about compliance with the law.

He further claimed that Buba remained a member of the APC as of May 19, 2026, nine days after the PRP’s reported deadline for submitting its membership register.

According to the APM legal adviser, Buba’s participation in the primary and his emergence as the PRP’s flag bearer, despite the alleged omission of his name from the relevant register, contravened the provisions of the Electoral Act 2026.

The party maintained that INEC’s inclusion of Buba on the final list of governorship candidates was based on a nomination it considers unlawful.

The allegations and claims contained in the suit are yet to be determined by the court.

Bauchi Guber: APM sues INEC, PRP, Buba over candidacy

Continue Reading

Trending