Artificial Intelligence in Allied Health Newsletter - April 2025

Hello, Hello!

Firstly, my apologies for the slight delay in the newsletter this month. I had the amazing privilege of travelling to the US to present at AOTA INSPIRE 2025 earlier this month, but the jet lag got me good! AOTA in Philly was an amazing experience, I met so many amazing OTs innovating and working in the digital health and AI worlds. I had the honour of presenting on AI implementation strategies to a full room of occupational therapists, and had them laughing along with my Aussie quirks. It’s continuing to be an exciting year of rapid development in tech, but the adoption of tech and AI in allied health seems also to be exponentially increasing. Let’s jump in to this month’s updates.

Industry News

Updated ChatGPT Model (Again)

Last month I opened the newsletter with the release of ChatGPT4.5 research preview, and this month I open with news of another new model release by OpenAI this month. In late March OpenAI released a new image generation model, allowing improved and seamless image generation within ChatGPT. The image generation capability of this model is far superior to previous models and allows for detailed creation and editing of images. It is noted the significant concern raised around this release with the model creating images mimicking Studio Ghibli’s iconic aesthetic. This, once again, raised concerns about copyright and the ethical implications of generation of content based on creative works.

Manus

Chinese startup Monica introduced it’s first AI Agent, Manus, to market. Manus is an autonomous AI agent capable of independently executing complex tasks like coding, travel planning, and financial analysis. I describe AI agents as capable of completing a whole job, including calling tools (like an internet browser, for example) and comprising several tasks. This varies from typical LLM use (e.g. ChatGPT) in that they can complete a single task. Manus is experiencing some challenges, but it’s release represents a shift toward using Agents that are more independent and goal-directed. For us in allied health, this means an agent can take responsibility for certain jobs, rather than us instructing it to complete individual tasks.

Research

A study released this month combines virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) to assist with the detection of autism in children. The approach used immersive VR tasks to capture full body movement and gaze pattern data as children interacted with avatars in a naturalistic, play-based environment. These interactions were then analysed by a deep learning model (AI) designed to identify motor patterns associated with autism. The system achieved over 85% accuracy, and outperformed traditional diagnostic methods.

Implications for Practice

This research highlights the growing potential of AI driven tools to create low-cost, more accessible, and non-invasive screening and assessment methods.
Read it Here.

Prompt of the Month

Each month, I’ll be sharing a useful AI prompt designed to enhance your practice. This month, let’s use AI for documentation.

"Act as a clinical documentation assistant. I’m going to describe the session in plain language, and I want you to convert it into a professional, strengths-based progress note suitable for a multidisciplinary audience. Use Australian terminology and avoid jargon. Ask clarifying questions if needed."

Tried this prompt? Send me an email and let me know how you found it!

Upcoming Events

Free: The Group Chat – group supervision/ community of practice

When: This week - Thursday, 24^th April 2025. 12-1pm AEDT (Australian Eastern Standard Time- Sydney/ Melbourne time).

Find your timezone here: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

 
Where: Online via Zoom
Cost: Free

Join me for a free, interactive "group chat" to share all things AI in allied health. It's a group supervision, community of practice, or interest group- whatever you want to call it, I'm calling it the 'group chat.' This session will be an open, informal, and mostly unstructured discussion for brainstorming, sharing ideas and challenges and peer learning!

The session will be recorded and available to those unable to attend live.

Sign up here.