About this episode

This episode discusses the implications of AI in medicine, including antibiotic discovery, healthcare costs, and health equity.

This week on Pulse: Hot Topics, Louise and George race through a very AI-heavy fortnight — from antibiotics and the menstrual cycle to whether "medical AI" is even a category worth defending. AI and Science. A Nature feature on AI accelerating antibiotic discovery (millions of molecules screened in silico, though only a tiny fraction can actually be synthesised), paired with a UK Biobank study mapping 198 proteins that fluctuate across the menstrual cycle — reframing it as a whole-body biological rhythm, not just a reproductive one. Do We Even Need Medical AI? A NYU study finds frontier general models outperforming purpose-built clinical tools like OpenEvidence and UpToDate — with an important caveat that no patient outcomes were measured. Paired with Apollo, Harvard's foundation model trained on 25 billion clinical events to forecast individual patient trajectories. What If AI Makes Healthcare More Expensive? David Brailer argues in Health Affairs that AI won't lower US health costs because it amplifies the incentives already baked into the payment system — accelerating both better care and billing extraction. The AI Equity Divide. A WHO-led initiative (GI-AI4H) and its RISE…

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