Wednesday, July 23, 2025

News items: FDA AI Software Hallucinates. Politico Sees Lobbying Boom for H

Two news items today.

FDA HALLUCINATIONS

An article at CNN (subscription) says that FDA software that aims to assist staff is hallucinating and "wastes a lot of extra time."

Quoting, "The FDA’s head of AI, Jeremy Walsh, admitted that Elsa can hallucinate nonexistent studies."

Another quote remarks, "If Elsa gives a one-paragraph summary of, say, 20 pages of research tied to a particular new drug, there is no way to know whether it misrepresents something or misses something that a human reviewer would have considered important, one FDA employee said."

More here:

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/07/23/politics/fda-ai-elsa-drug-regulation-makary



LOBBYING BOOM

POLITICO highlights facts about the boom in Washington lobbying across the healthcare industries.  The highlights article tracks back to a deeper-dive subscription article (aka Politico Pro).

PHRMA spent $7.6M in the second quarter, AHIP $4.0M, and AHA $6.1M.

Read more here:

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-pulse/2025/07/23/a-health-care-lobbying-boom-00469043