LONDON — A U.K. commission on Thursday unveiled its recommendations for how the country should regulate artificial intelligence in medicine, as health authorities globally try to determine how to continuously review ever-changing products after they have been authorized instead of simply clearing them once for the market. 

In its report, the commission sought to strike a balance between ensuring that the U.K. takes advantage of AI’s potential in medicine — the ability to review the millions of scans that are generated each year to track the eye health of patients with diabetes, for example — while prioritizing safety, tracking device performance over time, and treating patients equitably.

The 44 recommendations include some that would allow for the staged authorization of new AI models and others that would build a system for providers to report how tools are performing in their clinics — including when they malfunction or potentially inhibit patient care — as the models learn and adapt and perform differently depending on the setting.  

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

In a pair of late-stage trials, a drug from AstraZeneca reduced the dangerous flare-ups that drive the worsening of COPD, positioning it as a potential new option for the vast numbers of patients with the debilitating lung condition, according to data released Tuesday. 

Results from the Phase 3 trials of the drug, called tozorakimab, also amount to a re-assuring victory for AstraZeneca, which is known for its metronomic success in trials but has seen some notable misses in recent months, most dramatically with a heart disease drug. Analysts and the company have projected that “tozo,” as the injectable drug is dubbed, could reap billions in annual sales if approved, both in COPD — which, as the third-leading cause of death globally, remains greatly underserved — and in other conditions including asthma. 

In the trials, tozo reduced COPD exacerbations — any sudden worsening of the disease requiring medical care, whether a severe cough or breathlessness — by about 30% across all patients over a year, according to data presented at the European Respiratory Society’s annual conference in Barcelona and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. That finding makes tozo competitive with other COPD treatments that have reached patients in recent years, but notably, the tozo trials included participants not eligible for the other new drugs. The benefits seen in those patients could give AstraZeneca a large segment of the market to itself.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…