Can AI help solve a national health crisis?

It's complicated.

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Lily Jamali.

MUSIC

Artificial intelligence has touched pretty much every sector

of our economy, and health care is no exception.

Well, AI is now being used to help fight the nation's opioid crisis, which has claimed

well over a million American lives and has affected millions more who continue to struggle

with addiction.

Data crunching technology can flag doctors who might be over-prescribing pain meds and

single out patients at risk for overdosing on opioids.

But experts are raising big questions about how the AI behind the secret formulas driving

all of this works.

Risking how accurate they are and how biases might figure in.

Sam Whitehead from KFF Health News reports.

Last year, as Elizabeth Amaralt, waded in a hospital in Fort Wayne, Indiana for an MRI,

her pain was intense.

She asked a nurse for medication to help, but he said her narc's score, a rating that

tracks narcotics use, was too high.

She didn't know what that was.

I was crying.

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