The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has required health care systems to radically and rapidly rethink the delivery of care. One of the most remarkable ongoing changes has been the unprecedented accelerated expansion of telehealth. The pandemic may provide the incentive needed to realize the potential of telehealth. Nevertheless, concerns remain that safety and privacy may be compromised by rapid deregulation, despite data, although limited, regarding good overall quality. 1 In studies conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic, patients reported high levels of satisfaction. 2 This Viewpoint describes some of the most important telehealth regulatory changes that have occurred in response to COVID-19 and discusses some of the opportunities and challenges inherent in successfully harnessing the unexpected expanded role recently given to telehealth in the US.
Context: The opioid epidemic is a major US public health crisis. Its scope prompted significant public outreach, but this response triggered a series of journalistic articles comparing the opioid epidemic to the crack cocaine epidemic. Some authors claimed that the political response to the crack cocaine epidemic was criminal justice rather than medical in nature, motivated by divergent racial demographics.
Methods: We examine these assertions by analyzing the language used in relevant newspaper articles. Using a national sample, we compare word frequencies from articles about crack cocaine in 1988–89 and opioids in 2016–17 to evaluate media framings. We also examine articles about methamphetamines in 1992–93 and heroin throughout the three eras to distinguish between narratives used to describe the crack cocaine and opioid epidemics.
Findings: We find support for critics' hypotheses about the differential framing of the two epidemics: articles on the opioid epidemic are likelier to use medical terminology than criminal justice terminology while the reverse is true for crack cocaine articles.
Conclusions: Our analysis suggests that race and legality may influence policy responses to substance-use epidemics. Comparisons also suggest that the evolution of the media narrative on substance use cannot alone account for the divergence in framing between the two epidemics.
Artificial intelligence surveillance can be used to diagnose individual cases, track the spread of Covid‐19, and help provide care. The use of AI for surveillance purposes (such as detecting new Covid‐19 cases and gathering data from healthy and ill individuals) in a pandemic raises multiple concerns ranging from privacy to discrimination to access to care. Luckily, there exist several frameworks that can help guide stakeholders, especially physicians but also AI developers and public health officials, as they navigate these treacherous shoals. While these frameworks were not explicitly designed for AI surveillance during a pandemic, they can be adapted to help address concerns regarding privacy, human rights, and due process and equality. In a time where the rapid implementation of all tools available is critical to ending a pandemic, physicians, public health officials, and technology companies should understand the criteria for the ethical implementation of AI surveillance
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