Brittany Trang
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brittanytrang.com
Brittany Trang
@brittanytrang.com
8.8K followers 510 following 1.3K posts
Health tech / AI reporter @ STAT News
AAAS MMF '21
PFAS PhD/water nerd
Buckeye/believer/sad indie rock concertgoer
Signal: btrang.01
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brittanytrang.com
Do you, like me, feel like the news is trying its best to kill you? Fear not, I am standing in front of the firehose of #healthAI 🩺🖥️ news for you.

I present you with some tidy buckets of important health and biotech AI news you may have missed over the last month: www.statnews.com/2026/01/14/b...
Screenshot reading: ‘AI make number go up’ is going to be big this year If you’ve heard me say it once, you’ve heard me say it a million times: AI in health care is going to make costs go up, not down. Everybody is saying it now: In JAMA Health Forum, in NPJ Digital Medicine. HealthcareIT News reported that Intermountain got a seven-figure reimbursement boost in the first year of using Solventum’s AI clinical documentation integrity solution. Healthcare Finance reported that Baylor Scott and White Health expect to make an extra $42 million in net revenue after one year of using Accuity’s AI CDI and coding review tech, based on their data after six months. and a sidebar for a story that says: Related Story AI scribe companies promise to help doctors bill more. Who will pay the extra cost?
January 14, 2026 at 4:53 PM
brittanytrang.com
This is how fast health AI is moving: Between when I drafted this post on Monday and when it sent this morning, two of these 2026 #health #AI predictions basically became outdated.

(click in the below post to find out which ones they were!)
🖥️🩺
January 7, 2026 at 4:12 PM
brittanytrang.com
2. Seeing Hotline TNT play a laundromat.

Will Anderson knows how to put on a show. He forced us to crowd into the tiny venue side of Dirty Dungarees, & he was right. He forced us to put away our phones after 3 songs, & he was right. It was loud. A pit opened up at the end of the show. 💯, no notes.
December 31, 2025 at 4:22 PM
brittanytrang.com
My 10 favorite records from 2025, though I'm not wedded to this ordering.

Instead of championing an album of the year, I'm trying a new thing: my 5 favorite music moments of the year 👇🧵
Screenshot reading: 2025 Top Albums Raspberry Moon | Hotline TNT Revelation | The Knocks/Dragonette Losin' | Colin Miller The Yips | Petey USA Everything Must Go | Goose Dog-Eared | Billie Marten Patience, Moonbeam | Great Grandpa Blood on the Silver Screen | SASAMI Iron | Post Animal Chain Yer Dragon | Goose
December 31, 2025 at 4:22 PM
brittanytrang.com
Earlier this year, I asked more than 90 health AI experts what's on their bingo card for the rest of 2025.

Who gets to say "I told you so" now?

Our look back at what did and didn't happen in 2025:
www.statnews.com/2025/12/17/2...
🖥️🩺
December 17, 2025 at 2:16 PM
brittanytrang.com
We finally have randomized, controlled clinical trial results from ambient AI scribes. But what do these RCTs actually tell us?

Look at the below chart. Time savings are often low, but doctors give the technology rave reviews, esp in anecdotes that people tend to believe more than data 👀 🧵

🖥️🩺
December 3, 2025 at 4:56 PM
brittanytrang.com
In July, I asked health #AI experts what was on their bingo cards for the rest of 2025. Now it's time to see who was right.

Refresh yourself on the predictions: www.statnews.com/2025/07/02/w...

Vote by December 10: www.statnews.com/ai-prognosis...

🖥️🩺
November 26, 2025 at 3:39 PM
brittanytrang.com
Four years ago, we were @aaasmassmedia.bsky.social fellows, starry-eyed at our first full-time #sciencejournalism gigs.

Now, we're working dream/beyond-dream jobs at the New York Times, @cenmag.bsky.social and @statnews.com. 2021 us could not have imagined 2025 us.

#scicomm #stem #altchemjobs
November 12, 2025 at 1:59 PM
brittanytrang.com
Thrilled to meet my longtime #scicomm hero @ehmee.bsky.social at #SciWri25 today

and also shocked at how many people who would love her work have not heard of The Brain Scoop!

you simply MUST watch her series documenting taxidermying a wolf!! (TW: gross) youtube.com/playlist?lis...
🧪
November 8, 2025 at 3:34 AM
brittanytrang.com
Amid multiple studies showing that AI models aren't using medical reasoning to score well on medical board exams, radiation oncologist/Harvard AI researcher Danielle Bitterman really nails how the thinking about LLMs is flawed:

🩺🖥️
“Models just being able to memorize an answer doesn’t mean that they can generalize that information to related and nearby tasks, which is basically what we assume when we test humans on these exams,” she said. “We’re not assuming that they can only answer the questions on the exam — we’re saying, ‘Being able to answer the questions on this exam is a proxy for the general clinical knowledge base.’”
November 5, 2025 at 9:03 PM
brittanytrang.com
That escalated quickly...

The biggest story in health care AI right now has bypassed patient care and gone straight to the money.

Insurers and providers are duking it out over bills and claims with AI lightsabers. I predicted this back in the summer 👇

Let's take a closer look. 🧵
🩺🖥️
Screenshot reading: But Robinson also warned the technology will escalate the ongoing war between providers and insurers on billing that’s already resulting in an AI arms race. As health insurance companies see their profit margins decline because members are getting more care than anticipated, “the payers are not going to simply pay you more now,” he said. “They can’t.”
November 3, 2025 at 5:10 PM
brittanytrang.com
Happy Mole Day to all the chemists out there (and others who care!)

From 2021 me, who had access to a lab, here's exactly one mole of sodium hydroxide for your timeline:

#chemsky #science #MoleDay 🧪⚗️
A lot of white pellets sitting on a piece of weigh paper on an analytical balance reading "40.0070 g"
October 23, 2025 at 2:59 PM
brittanytrang.com
Thrilled to kick off NASW's #SciWri25 at the virtual plenary this Thursday! Our session will be about:

- what AI actually is
- what journalists need to know about it
- ideas about how to use it in your reporting

I'll be moderating the discussion at noon CT / 1 p ET on Oct 23. See you there!
ScienceWriters2025 Thursday Oct 23, 2025 / 12:00PM - 01:00PM "The Truth About AI: How to report on it without giving in to hype, and how to use it in the newsroom"
October 20, 2025 at 5:41 PM
brittanytrang.com
(Side note: these screenshots from a Pfizer ad the FDA complained about look like they were taken from a College Humor Hardly Working sketch....and when you look closer, that's literally Ross Bryant)
September 17, 2025 at 3:52 PM
brittanytrang.com
Unfortunately using a "-ai" filter does not work for me, as I am a health AI reporter (subscribe to my newsletter!) and often need to search for AI stuff.

Newsletter: www.statnews.com/signup/ai-pr...

Also, adding "-ai" does not turn off the AI overview 🙃
Screenshot of Google search results page for the search "rate limiting step kinetics -ai" with an AI overview at the top
September 15, 2025 at 3:25 PM
brittanytrang.com
Unfortunate news: I am here to tell you that the trick of including curse words in your Google search no longer disables the AI overview

(I usually include a much milder word but had to experiment to see if the results were different...they were not)
Screenshot of Google search results page for the search "rate limiting step kinetics fuck" with an AI overview at the top
September 15, 2025 at 3:25 PM
brittanytrang.com
Today is my 3-year STATiversary. I'll never forget getting an email from the NYT's Carl Zimmer as I took the Red Line to the STAT office the first time (pictured below!), asking me for an interview about my Science paper.

Weird way to start off a career as a reporter—getting interviewed yourself! 🧵
August 15, 2025 at 9:12 PM
brittanytrang.com
The most intriguing idea is the proposal to explore sequencing all life on federal lands to create data for a biological foundation model

(sounds kind of like Basecamp Research's model)
🩺🖥️🧬🧪
Explore the creation of a whole-genome sequencing program for life on Federal lands, led by the NSTC and including members of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, DOE, NIH, NSF, the Department of Interior, and Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units to collaborate on the development of an initiative to establish a whole genome sequencing program for life on Federal lands (to include all biological domains). This new data would be a valuable resource in training future biological foundation models.
July 23, 2025 at 5:19 PM
brittanytrang.com
This is also an interesting (maybe controversial) idea: Emphasizing datasets that are amenable to AI by using "what's the impact of datasets from your previous work" as a metric for grant funding, and requiring people to disclose datasets that are used in AI work that's federally funded
• Incentivize researchers to release more high-quality datasets publicly by considering the impact of scientific and engineering datasets from a researchers’ prior funded efforts in the review of proposals for new projects. • Require federally funded researchers to disclose non-proprietary, non-sensitive datasets that are used by AI models during the course of research and experimentation.
July 23, 2025 at 5:19 PM
brittanytrang.com
There are some interesting #science proposals in the White House's new AI Action Plan (pgs 11-12). A thread: 🧵

First, the administration wants to invest in the "cloud labs" concept:

🖥️🩺🧪⚗️🧬⚛️🔬 #sciencesky #chemsky
www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...
Invest in AI-Enabled Science Like many other domains, science itself will be transformed by AI. AI systems can already generate models of protein structures, novel materials, and much else. Increasingly powerful general-purpose models show promise in formulating hypotheses and designing experiments. These nascent capabilities promise to accelerate scientific advancement. They will only do so, however, with critical changes in the way science is conducted, including the enabling scientific infrastructure. AI-enabled predictions are of little use if scientists cannot also increase the scale of experimentation. Basic science today is often a labor-intensive process; the AI era will require more scientific and engineering research to transform theories into industrial-scale enterprises. This, in turn, will necessitate new infrastructure and support of new kinds of scientific organizations.
July 23, 2025 at 5:19 PM
brittanytrang.com
In this week's AI Prognosis, one VC's take on what health AI areas are good/bad investments right now

Plus: I'm confused about CHAI's Medicaid AI "tiger team." Are you? Reach out: [email protected] / btrang.01 on Signal

www.statnews.com/2025/07/23/w...
Emma Beavins at Fierce Healthcare has more details on the proposed workgroup, which will be working on a compressed timeline: Six months for a draft, and finalized within a year, in an effort to keep pace with HHS’s implementation deadline. That means that it will “likely” skip some steps that are usually included in the CHAI process, like community review and public comment. “This is a little bit more of a nuanced area where we may not need as much rigor as one of our more formal best practices,” CHAI CEO Brian Anderson told Beavins. How can something that is nuanced not need as much rigor as something that is less nuanced? When STAT asked CHAI for clarification, Anderson said that by “nuanced,” he was referring to the “emerging nature of” AI uses for Medicaid. “We will continue to advocate for oversight given the equity implications, but we’re also building guidance in a space where there just isn’t a deep bench of prior work to pull from,” he wrote in an emailed statement. But doesn’t the relative lack of information mean that guidelines in this space should require more study, not less? Are you also confused about this initiative? I would love to hear from you (CHAI members and non-members alike). I’m open to off-the-record or on-background conversations: brittany.trang@statnews.com, or btrang.01 on Signal.
July 23, 2025 at 4:10 PM
brittanytrang.com
The news about Wired changing up its subscription reminded me:

This weekend I became a @wired.com subscriber, and also became a monthly donor to @npr.org and my childhood @pbs.org station.

If you want something to keep existing, now is the time to support it!
July 23, 2025 at 1:29 PM
brittanytrang.com
Also, for any of the @dimension20.bsky.social #cloho #cloudwardho fans out there... I kept thinking about the walking snake the entire time I was writing this, but that analogy would have been even more complicated than pasta
July 17, 2025 at 7:32 PM
brittanytrang.com
The mysterious "American Society for AI" gives me the same vibes as the Yale secret society from Gilmore Girls.

It's a "private & prestigious club that brings together prominent leaders & executives" to ‍"create a better world with AI." 🤨

Check out its rules:
FAQs: • Only members can attend the gatherings • Membership is by invitation only • We do not share membership information • Members cannot disclose the names of other members • The gathering location is provided only to members • No recordings are permitted during the gatherings • We decline any sponsorships and donations • We decline any requests from media/press If you have a question, please contact a board member.
July 9, 2025 at 7:29 PM
brittanytrang.com
What's on your health AI bingo card for the rest of 2025?

I asked more than 90 health and life sciences AI experts for their 🌶️ takes as we kick off the second half of the year at AI Prognosis:

🖥️🩺 #health #medicine #AI
www.statnews.com/2025/07/02/w...
July 2, 2025 at 3:13 PM