After laying off thousands of HHS workers, firing America’s top vaccine experts, scaring people away from using Tylenol, and hiring a CDC director who has no medical training whatsoever, health czar Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is casting about for new ways to “improve” America’s healthcare system. The solution he’s come up with? Figure out how AI can make everything better.
Kennedy doesn’t seem to know how AI can make healthcare better, which is probably why his agency is holding a competition that will give money to whoever can figure it out. On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would be holding what it calls the Caregiving Artificial Intelligence Prize Competition. The point of the competition is to “fund and recognize innovators” who develop tools that can “support caregivers” (i.e., healthcare workers that take care of elderly and disabled Americans), and support “employers by improving efficiency, scheduling, and training in the caregiving workforce.” The winner of the competition will get a $2 million prize, the government has said.
“America’s caregivers carry our nation’s most vulnerable on their shoulders, and they do it with a strength and devotion that rarely gets the recognition it deserves,” said Kennedy in a prepared statement. “With the Caregiver AI Challenge, we are advancing the goals of the Make America Healthy Again Strategy Report by mobilizing innovation to lighten caregivers’ load and ensure every family has the support they need to care for the people they love.”
AI has shown some promising applications in the world of healthcare (it has shown some promise in automating the early detection of cancer, for instance). However, it’s unclear what, exactly HHS is looking to produce here. The language on the website is pretty vague, stating merely that winning “solutions will empower caregivers, protect dignity, and expand access to high-quality care at home.” Gizmodo reached out to HHS for more information about its competition.
While leaning into automation to make American healthcare better, Kennedy also seemed to take steps to advance his own unique agenda within the federal health bureaucracy. This week, it was reported that the government had hired a key figure from his MAHA movement, Calley Means. It was reported that Means, who has been critical of highly processed food, and who owns his own health company, had been hired as a senior advisor at HHS.
Kennedy was also in the news this week because the internet has been collectively laughing at the memoir put out by Olivia Nuzzi, the journalist who admitted to a “digital” tryst with Kennedy last year. Nuzzi was placed on leave from New York magazine in September of last year, after admitting to having the supposed affair while covering Kennedy as a political candidate. She later left the magazine, and is now the West Coast editor of Vanity Fair.
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