Umbereen S. Nehal, MD, MPH, MBA’s Post

This is why responsible people in #healthcare, #tech, #AI, etc must take a step forward, not back. If we go passive and step back, the least responsible will rush ahead and fill the virtual spaces with this: “AI can produce authoritative-looking content that is false or misleading, including deceptive medical text and illustrations or persuasive but inaccurate health videos. Voice-cloning AI can synthesize realistic-sounding human voices or imitate individuals’ speech. Pairing cloned voices with AI-generated avatars can produce deepfakes—manipulated videos presented as authentic.” #misinformation #disinformation #patienteducation

In the U.S. alone, ~6K women daily and 1-2 million women a year enter #menopause. Perimenopause can last 10-15 years and start in a woman’s 30s. Unaddressed menopause symptoms cost a preventable $26.5 billion annually. While #endometriosis destroying organs, including my ovaries, pushed me into perimenopause earlier than most, if you consider above stats, half of a woman’s life is in #perimenopause or #menopause. Yet, only 1 in 5 ob/gyn is taught about menopause and even fewer PCPs, even fewer non-gyn specialists. Yet women have hearts and get heart attacks, the risk of which goes up after menopause. There are myriad examples across all organ systems. Men: your marriages might not end in divorce if women were not so unsupported medically and socially at midlife. Also, painful intercourse for a woman does not help most marriages. Women deserve better. My generation, Gen X, is not having our mothers’ menopause. Thankfully, the #healthcare industry is waking up to the blue ocean opportunity here. Per the World Economic Forum and McKinsey & Company, #womenhealth is a $1 trillion opportunity.

50 years ago, a woman needed a man’s signature to open a bank account or to have a credit card. Most of Gen X and all Boomers were born into an America where women were not full citizens but either were treated like children, or like objects, controlled by men. When you do not have your own money, that too in capitalism - where everything and everyone is commoditized - then you are not an “owner” but you are the possession, owned. There are really only those two options in a society and system where everything and everyone is valued by economists with a dollar amount. Ownership matters. Financial rights matter. No, we are not going back.

Institutions need to build their own self-hosted private “small language models”, else custom GPT with #privacy controls. Bans never work. The technology is too tempting. Even lawyers, who should know better, have made this misstep and error. Someone is going to do this again. Instead, re-direct the behavior towards a safe, secure alternative. “…ban staff from using generative AI services after a worker was found to have entered significant amounts of personal information, including the name of an at-risk child, into ChatGPT” #AI #genAI #LLM

Powerful storytelling on what it is like to be an undergraduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You could not pay me enough money to be this age again: the pressure is intense. I recall cracking under the pressure, myself, struggling with my own #mentalhealth, when at Wellesley College, often visiting MIT. What I experienced is common in Asian-American young women in college, especially. This ethnic group has under-recognized risks when in college. https://lnkd.in/eSZM4-DJ The pressures of elite Boston institutions affect everyone. When you are “the good daughter”, a child of immigrants, of a minority community, that adds even more pressure. Whereas “savior” types thought they were empathizing, with “It must be hard to be the first woman in your family to go to college”, coming at me with with their Orientalist and diminishing wrong assumptions of Muslim women, in fact, they were imposing their own caricatures on me. I had grown up visiting #Pakistan often, seeing the leadership, strength, intelligence, and autonomy of women in my family. My great aunt, an obstetrician, founded and ran her own hospital in Pakistan. Western feminists - whose American mothers could not open credit cards without a man’s permission until 1974 - could not comprehend that. In my family, regardless of gender, even if you get a PhD or become a doctor, you still only are meeting a bare minimum standard. That was isolating as a child of immigrants in a high intensity college setting. When I left Boston, to skip undergrad, to go directly to med school in Pakistan at age 19, while that too was hard, I went to a country that had a female Prime Minister and to a med school that had a female head of surgery. I felt a different kind of isolation, as “the American”, in a culture with many social rules and as a sudden “big sis” to younger cousins. I did not feel diminished, though. My mental health vastly improved. Things today, in Boston colleges, are a lot different from when I was in my 20s. Yes, there are so many more programs. Even so, that too can add to FOMO and “should” pressures. The pressure is the same, including for women of color: https://lnkd.in/e3raAF4W Grateful to be able to be the “big sis” and “second mom” to a few mentees, including on the support for securing the ever important internship and work experience aspect of early career, as shown in this student film. Being the “baby” in my own family, I had a trailblazing older sister in med school who arranged internships for me then taught me how to be proactive and secure opportunities for myself. Having role models who are personally invested in you makes a big difference for success. Having women of color “big sis” who have walked the path ahead of you, and can see you as you, can make the tough, intense college experience just a little bit easier. (Yes, MIT really has a banana lounge. https://lnkd.in/eYbfc2bg) https://lnkd.in/eaXuUhNb

These data cause such cognitive dissonance and, frankly, heartbreak. Despite my #MBA, I remain a #publichealth type, who cares deeply for those at the margins, about reducing disparities, about #safety and #quality: these are many populations & things that lack a “#businesscase” in the U.S. “system” (really is too fragmented to be called that). On one hand, I find myself valued for potential business development by international, especially European, #biotech. On the other hand, there are these data. The whole world wishes to enter the lucrative U.S. market - and they genuinely do represent some incredible, impressive, science-advancing #innovation - all while 1 in 4 Americans skips a needed medication due to cost, while the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the U.S. is unpaid medical bills, while we Americans have a declining life expectancy with climbing mortality rates. Included in that higher mortality rate are real human beings who were beloved family members who leave a gaping hole. Included in that mortality rate is my own late mother. Wheras I lean heavily on faith to accept “it was her time, as written”, the scientist and doctor in me knows she had a premature, preventable death and she should still be here, reading to her grandchildren, being a pillar of society and benefactor to charities, and being my best friend. All of us feel her loss. My late mother was failed by the same #publichealth system that I had invested my own career and life to serving. The failure is not of public health but of the politicians who are the final arbitrators, decision makers, funders. I had been following in the footsteps of generations of family members in public service, but individuals like me are not enough to overcompensate. No matter how hard individuals work, even to point of burnout, no individual can beat a bad system or slashed budgets. There are unnecessary bureaucratic barriers for “the little guy” individuals yet nepotism, corruption, & fraud in government spending for those well connected. Is either party’s presidential candidate going to change this if elected? I wish I had an optimistic answer for that. So, yes, I lead a seemingly glamorous cosmopolitan life in Kendall Sq. While I do truly love the innovation space, in reality, on the inside, I feel tremendous heartbreak. The “drive” behind my “obsession” as a #socialimpact #entrepreneur is intense pain at the failure represented by these data and that I feel daily from the absence of my late mother. The story on my pitch deck is of me, of my going from being an advisor to the White House to being in a hospital bed, needing the first of 6 blood transfusions and nearly dying from medical neglect. It is an engaging story, but in reality, a better, sensible, non-wasteful, high quality, safe system would not have produced my story nor my entrepreneurial drive at all.

Venture Café Cambridge never disappoints. This week got to hear from MIT Technology Review 35 under 35. #innovation #boston #cambridge

When I started my career, there had been rapid strides on #safetyculture. Then came Wall St running boards and we got this kind of worsening #bullying, #retaliation, and opposition to #safety. When a #physician is terminated, it forever shows up on their license and can be used by a corrupt or unscrupulous employer to threaten or smear doctors, even get licenses revoked. There is a widespread culture of fear in #healthcare as a result.