Connect with us

Published

on

GE Healthcare booth is seen ahead of the 2022 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) at China National Convention Center on August 28, 2022 in Beijing, China. 

Yi Haifei | China News Service | Getty Images

GE HealthCare on Monday announced a new artificial intelligence application it said will save time for doctors who diagnose and treat cancer.

CareIntellect for Oncology, as the tool is called, will help oncologists get up to speed on a patient’s history and disease progression by quickly showing them the data they need, the company said. GE said it wants to spare oncologists the headache of digging through records so they can focus on caring for their patients.   

Health-care data is notoriously difficult to analyze, and as much as 97% of the data produced by hospitals goes unused, according to a Deloitte report. That information is stored across numerous vendors and file formats such as images, lab test results, clinical notes and device readings, which can be extremely taxing for doctors to sort through. 

“It’s very time-consuming, very frustrating for these clinicians,”  Dr. Taha Kass-Hout, GE HealthCare’s global chief science and technology officer, told CNBC in an interview.

CareIntellect for Oncology will be able to summarize clinical reports and identify when patients are deviating from their treatment plans, Kass-Hout said. The system can flag when a patient misses a lab test, for instance, so that their doctor can determine the best next steps. 

“For cancer patients, the treatment journey can last years and involve numerous doctor visits,” he said.

GE HealthCare’s CareIntellect for Oncology

Courtesy of GE HealthCare

CareIntellect for Oncology can also help identify relevant clinical trials that patients might be eligible for, saving oncologists hours of work, said Chelsea Vane, vice president of digital products at GE HealthCare. That process has traditionally required doctors to scroll through a database of available trials, memorize inclusion and exclusion criteria and dig through patient records to determine a good fit, Vane told CNBC.

“What we’ve done is remove that,” she said.

The purpose of the new app is to save oncologists time and effort, but if doctors want to dive into more detail, CareIntellect for Oncology allows them to view the original record that’s referenced, the company said.

GE HealthCare is planning to make CareIntellect for Oncology widely available to U.S. customers in 2025, and it will initially be optimized for prostate and breast cancers. Health organizations such as Tampa General Hospital are already evaluating it, the company said. Since the tool is cloud-based, it will drive recurring revenue for GE HealthCare, Kass-Hout said. 

The company is planning to introduce additional apps under the CareIntellect brand in the future, Kass-Hout said. The oncology tool is the first offering, and health-care organizations will be able to easily pick and choose the apps that they want to enable, he added.  

GE HealthCare is also hoping to integrate its CareIntellect products with some of the other early stage AI initiatives it teased on Monday.   

The company highlighted five new AI products that it is developing, including a collaborative team of AI agents, a tool to predict an aggressive type of breast cancer recurrence, and a tool to flag suspicious mammography scans to radiologists more quickly. 

GE HealthCare decided to preview the new tools to give customers an idea of the problems it’s trying to solve, Kass-Hout said. The company will solicit feedback from health-care organizations and work with regulators as necessary, he said. 

For instance, GE HealthCare is exploring how a group of AI agents can work together as a team to support doctors through its tool called Health Companion.

The agents in Health Companion will be trained as experts in specific domains, such as radiology, pathology or genomics, and offer insights based on their expertise, Kass-Hout said. The agents could identify whether a specific symptom is a side effect of treatment or a sign of disease progression, for example, and suggest next steps, he added. 

Ideally, the tool will give doctors the same kind of support they’d expect from working with a multidisciplinary team, Kass-Hout said. But while consulting a panel of experts can take days or weeks, Health Companion would be available immediately. 

“At the moment, it’s an early concept,” he said. “Our aim is to elevate the standard of care and get ahead of the overburden of clinicians trying to take care of their patient.”

WATCH: The Pulse of AI in Health Care

The Pulse of AI in Health Care

Continue Reading

Technology

How TikTok’s rise sparked a short-form video race

Published

on

By

How TikTok’s rise sparked a short-form video race

TikTok’s grip on the short-form video market is tightening, and the world’s biggest tech platforms are racing to catch up.

Since launching globally in 2016, ByteDance-owned TikTok has amassed over 1.12 billion monthly active users worldwide, according to Backlinko. American users spend an average of 108 minutes per day on the app, according to Apptoptia.

TikTok’s success has reshaped the social media landscape, forcing competitors like Meta and Google to pivot their strategies around short-form video. But so far, experts say that none have matched TikTok’s algorithmic precision.

“It is the center of the internet for young people,” said Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst at Emarketer. “It’s where they go for entertainment, news, trends, even shopping. TikTok sets the tone for everyone else.”

Platforms like Meta‘s Instagram Reels and Google’s YouTube Shorts have expanded aggressively, launching new features, creator tools and even considering separate apps just to compete. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, traditionally a professional networking site, is the latest to experiment with TikTok-style feeds. But with TikTok continuing to evolve, adding features like e-commerce integrations and longer videos, the question remains whether rivals can keep up.

“I’m scrolling every single day. I doom scroll all the time,” said TikTok content creator Alyssa McKay.

But there may a dark side to this growth.

As short-form content consumption soars, experts warn about shrinking attention spans and rising mental-health concerns, particularly among younger users. Researchers like Dr. Yann Poncin, associate professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University, point to disrupted sleep patterns and increased anxiety levels tied to endless scrolling habits.

“Infinite scrolling and short-form video are designed to capture your attention in short bursts,” Dr. Poncin said. “In the past, entertainment was about taking you on a journey through a show or story. Now, it’s about locking you in for just a few seconds, just enough to feed you the next thing the algorithm knows you’ll like.”

Despite sky-high engagement, monetizing short videos remains an uphill battle. Unlike long-form YouTube content, where ads can be inserted throughout, short clips offer limited space for advertisers. Creators, too, are feeling the squeeze.

“It’s never been easier to go viral,” said Enberg. “But it’s never been harder to turn that virality into a sustainable business.”

Last year, TikTok generated an estimated $23.6 billion in ad revenues, according to Oberlo, but even with this growth, many creators still make just a few dollars per million views. YouTube Shorts pays roughly four cents per 1,000 views, which is less than its long-form counterpart. Meanwhile, Instagram has leaned into brand partnerships and emerging tools like “Trial Reels,” which allow creators to experiment with content by initially sharing videos only with non-followers, giving them a low-risk way to test new formats or ideas before deciding whether to share with their full audience. But Meta told CNBC that monetizing Reels remains a work in progress.

While lawmakers scrutinize TikTok’s Chinese ownership and explore potential bans, competitors see a window of opportunity. Meta and YouTube are poised to capture up to 50% of reallocated ad dollars if TikTok faces restrictions in the U.S., according to eMarketer.

Watch the video to understand how TikTok’s rise sparked a short form video race.

Continue Reading

Technology

Elon Musk’s xAI Holdings in talks to raise $20 billion, Bloomberg News reports

Published

on

By

Elon Musk's xAI Holdings in talks to raise  billion, Bloomberg News reports

The X logo appears on a phone, and the xAI logo is displayed on a laptop in Krakow, Poland, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Elon Musk‘s xAI Holdings is in discussions with investors to raise about $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The funding would value the company at over $120 billion, according to the report.

Musk was looking to assign “proper value” to xAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber earlier this month. The remarks were made during a call with xAI investors, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. The Tesla CEO at that time didn’t explicitly mention any upcoming funding round, but the sources suggested xAI was preparing for a substantial capital raise in the near future.

The funding amount could be more than $20 billion as the exact figure had not been decided, the Bloomberg report added.

Artificial intelligence startup xAI didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.

Faber Report: Elon Musk held call with current xAI investors, sources say

The AI firm last month acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said on X, announcing the deal. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”

Read the full Bloomberg story here.

— CNBC’s Samantha Subin contributed to this report.

Continue Reading

Technology

Alphabet jumps 3% as search, advertising units show resilient growth

Published

on

By

Alphabet jumps 3% as search, advertising units show resilient growth

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Alphabet‘s stock gained 3% Friday after signaling strong growth in its search and advertising businesses amid a competitive artificial intelligence environment and uncertain macro backdrop.

GOOGL‘s pace of GenAI product roll-out is accelerating with multiple encouraging signals,” wrote Morgan Stanley‘s Brian Nowak. “Macro uncertainty still exists but we remain [overweight] given GOOGL’s still strong relative position and improving pace of GenAI enabled product roll-out.”

The search giant posted earnings of $2.81 per share on $90.23 billion in revenues. That topped the $89.12 billion in sales and $2.01 in EPS expected by LSEG analysts. Revenues grew 12% year-over-year and ahead of the 10% anticipated by Wall Street.

Net income rose 46% to $34.54 billion, or $2.81 per share. That’s up from $23.66 billion, or $1.89 per share, in the year-ago period. Alphabet said the figure included $8 billion in unrealized gains on its nonmarketable equity securities connected to its investment in a private company.

Adjusted earnings, excluding that gain, were $2.27 per share, according to LSEG, and topped analyst expectations.

Read more CNBC tech news

Alphabet shares have pulled back about 16% this year as it battles volatility spurred by mounting trade war fears and worries that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs could crush the global economy. That would make it more difficult for Alphabet to potentially acquire infrastructure for data centers powering AI models as it faces off against competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic to develop largely language models.

During Thursday’s call with investors, Alphabet suggested that it’s too soon to tally the total impact of tariffs. However, Google’s business chief Philipp Schindler said that ending the de minimis trade exemption in May, which created a loophole benefitting many Chinese e-commerce retailers, could create a “slight headwind” for the company’s ads business, specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. The loophole allows shipments under $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free.

Despite this backdrop, Alphabet showed steady growth in its advertising and search business, reporting $66.89 billion in revenues for its advertising unit. That reflected 8.5% growth from the year-ago period. The company reported $8.93 billion in advertising revenue for its YouTube business, shy of an $8.97 billion estimate from StreetAccount.

Alphabet’s “Search and other” unit rose 9.8% to $50.7 billion, up from $46.16 billion last year. The company said that its AI Overviews tool used in its Google search results page has accumulated 1.5 billion monthly users from a billion in October.

Bank of America analyst Justin Post said that Wall Street is underestimating the upside potential and “monetization ramp” from this tool and cloud demand fueled by AI.

“The strong 1Q search performance, along with constructive comments on Gemini [large language model] performance and [AI Overviews] adoption could help alleviate some investor concerns on AI competition,” Post wrote in a note.

WATCH: Gemini delivering well for Google, says Check Capital’s Chris Ballard

Gemini delivering well for Google, says Check Capital's Chris Ballard

CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

Continue Reading

Trending