Our news and science feeds are so filled these days with everything artificial intelligence (AI), from large language models to their impacts on society, that we may miss important studies on other informatics topics, some of which may have lessons for AI. This is the case for a recent randomized controlled trial (RCT) on a hospital readmissions initiative (Donzé, 2023) and an accompanying editorial putting it in larger perspective.(Wachter, 2023)
Some may remember about a decade ago, when “data analytics” was the rage, and health insurance payors were noting with alarm the growing rate of hospital readmissions.