Overwhelmed by queries, physicians are turning to artificial intelligence to correspond with patients. Many have no clue that the replies are software-generated.Every day, patients send hundreds of thousands of messages to their doctors through MyChart, a communications platform that is nearly ubiquitous in U.S. hospitals.They describe their pain and divulge their symptoms — the texture of their rashes, the color of their stool — trusting the doctor on the other end to advise them. But increasingly, the responses to those messages are not written by the doctor — at least, not entirely. About 15,000 doctors and assistants at more than 150 health systems are using a new artificial intelligence feature in MyChart to draft replies to such messages.Many patients receiving those replies have no idea that they were written with the help of artificial intelligence. In interviews, officials at several health systems using MyChart’s tool acknowledged that they do not disclose that the messages contain A.I.-generated content.The trend troubles some experts who worry that doctors may not be vigilant enough to catch potentially dangerous errors in medically significant messages drafted by A.I.In an industry that has largely used A.I. to tackle administrative tasks like summarizing appointment notes or appealing insurance denials, critics fear that the wide adoption of MyChart’s tool has allowed A.I. to edge into clinical decision-making and doctor-patient relationships.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Police in Switzerland made multiple arrests after someone reportedly ended their life using a so-called suicide pod, in apparently the first case of its kind.

India has reported its first case with the new mpox strain that has triggered a public health emergency alert by the World Health Organization (WHO), Reuters reports.

BBCThe mother of a teenager with severe learning difficulties says she was so desperate for help from social services that she felt she had “no option” but to drop him at school and not return to pick him up again.

From Covid to dengue, viral outbreaks seemed to be popping up all over. But maybe Americans are just more attuned to threats now.Bird flu. Mpox, formerly monkeypox. Eastern equine encephalitis. West Nile. Listeria. Dengue. Oropouche. And, of course, Covid.Have the past few months felt like an unending parade of infectious disease?A plethora of pathogens dominated headlines all summer, and some of that attention may have been warranted: Oropouche, a tropical infection, and dengue devastated South America; mpox is ravaging parts of Africa; and bird flu holds the potential to flare into a dangerous pandemic.But in the United States, the threat to public health was much less alarming than it may have seemed.Mosquitoes sickened some Americans with infections like dengue, malaria, West Nile virus and Eastern equine encephalitis. But with the exception of dengue, the viruses were less of a problem, or at least no worse, this year than last year.The major public health troublemakers were familiar foes: Covid, measles and whooping cough, along with a litany of noninfectious threats, including drug overdoses, heart disease and cancer, said Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.What has changed is how attuned to new pathogens many Americans are after the coronavirus pandemic, she added.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Nurses in England have voted to reject the government’s offer of a 5.5% pay rise, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has said.

The future of 25 projects that are part of the New Hospital Programme in England is in doubt, after the government announced it would be reviewing their feasibility.

Family photoA mother has lost her two-year-old daughter to a rare genetic condition that claimed the life of her son three years ago.

“The Golden Bachelorette” offers a glimpse at how dating changes after losing the love of your life. This is what it’s really like.Four months after her husband of 30 years died in 2012, Kathryn Shephard Cowan went on a date to the symphony with a man who seemed perfectly nice.In hindsight, Ms. Shephard Cowan, who is 81 and lives in Santa Cruz, Calif., isn’t entirely sure why she thought she was ready to try dating, why she felt so compelled to move on. “You can do it,” she had told herself before the outing. “You can do it.”What she didn’t anticipate was that hearing Beethoven — her husband’s favorite composer — would cause her to completely shut down, making a connection with her date virtually impossible.“I was just torn apart emotionally,” Ms. Shephard Cowan said.There are more than 11 million widows and 3 million widowers in the United States; like Ms. Shephard Cowan, most are 65 or older. And many are grieving a longtime partner while attempting to navigate the dating scene for the first time in decades. They may also be struggling to determine how soon to move on — by their own standards, and by society’s.It is a tricky dance, said Sherry Cormier, a psychologist and trauma bereavement specialist, whose husband died when she was 61.“Even when we do date or re-partner,” Dr. Cormier said, “and even when we’ve done a lot of work in processing our grief, it does not mean our grief is ‘over.’”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Getty Images/BBCThe government in England is planning the biggest reimagining of the NHS in its history.