A growing number of studies suggest that many of these tools can deliver accurate results. But there’s a bigger question here: Does using them actually translate into better health outcomes for patients? We don’t yet have a good answer. That’s what Jenna Wiens, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan, and Anna Goldenberg of the University of Toronto, argue in a paper published in the journal Nature Medicine this week. Wiens tells me she has spent years investigating how AI might benefit health care. For the first decade of her career she tried to pitch the technology to clinicians. Over the last few years, she says, it’s as though “a switch flipped.” Health-care providers not only appear much more interested in the promise of these technologies, they have also begun rapidly deploying them. The problem is that many providers aren’t rigorously assessing how well they actually work. Take “ambient AI” tools, for example.…