After firing thousands of HHS employees, firing America’s top vaccine experts, scaring people into using Tylenol, and appointing a CDC director who has no medical training, health czar Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is looking for new ways to “reform” America’s healthcare system. What solution has he come up with? Find out how AI can make everything better.
Kennedy doesn’t know how AI could improve health care, which is probably why his agency is holding a contest that will pay money to whoever can figure it out. On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it will hold a Caregiving Artificial Intelligence Awards competition. The purpose of the competition is to “fund and recognize innovators” who develop tools that “can support caregivers” (i.e., healthcare workers who care for elderly and disabled Americans), and “support employers by improving efficiency, scheduling, and training in the caregiver workforce.” The government has said that the winner of the competition will receive a prize of $2 million.
“America’s caregivers carry our nation’s most vulnerable on their shoulders, and they do it with a strength and dedication that rarely gets the recognition they deserve,” Kennedy said 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 the burden of caregivers and ensure every family has the support they need to care for the ones they love.”
AI has shown some promising applications in the world of healthcare (for example, it has shown some promise in automating the early detection of cancer). However, it is not clear what HHS actually wants to produce here. The language on the website is fairly vague, saying only that “winning solutions will empower caregivers, protect dignity, and expand access to high-quality care at home.” Gizmodo contacted HHS for more information about its competition.
While leaning toward automation to improve American health care, Kennedy also appeared to be taking steps to pursue his own unique agenda within the federal health bureaucracy. This week, it was reported that the government had hired a key figure from his MHA movement, Kelly Means. It was reported that Means, who has been a critic of highly processed food, and who owns his own health company, was appointed as a senior advisor at HHS.
Kennedy was also in the news this week because the Internet is collectively laughing at the memoir produced by journalist Olivia Nuzzi, who admitted to a “digital” meeting with Kennedy last year. Nuzzi was placed on leave new york The magazine acknowledged the alleged affair last September while covering Kennedy as a political candidate. She later left the magazine and is now the West Coast editor Vanity Fair,