Brittany Trang
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brittanytrang.com
Brittany Trang
@brittanytrang.com
8.8K followers 510 following 1.3K posts
Health tech / AI reporter @ STAT News
AAAS MMF '21
PFAS PhD/water nerd
Buckeye/believer/sad indie rock concertgoer
Signal: btrang.01
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brittanytrang.com
Proud of this contribution to today's Morning Rounds — and not just because I managed to get "squeezed from the teat of a beet" into the newsletter.

#chemistry #food #fda
As STAT’s friendly neighborhood PhD chemist, I am here to remind you that everything is chemicals no matter where it comes from. “Natural” vanilla includes vanillin made from tree pulp waste, and just because a dye is “natural” doesn’t mean it’s necessarily squeezed from the teat of a beet. The FDA’s new working definition of “natural” dyes includes dyes that are manufactured via fermentation from yeast, algae, or fungi; mixed or reacted with other chemicals, or extracted from plants bred to maximize color production. —Brittany Trang
February 6, 2026 at 3:51 PM
brittanytrang.com
You're tired of reading takes about Doctronic's Utah AI prescription pilot. But did you know that the company hasn't spoken to the FDA about it?

Nine policy and legal experts STAT spoke to disputed Doctronic's argument that its AI is not a medical device:

🩺🖥️
“I’m befuddled why this is not a medical device and why folks believe that ‘medical device’ and ‘practice of medicine’ are mutually exclusive,” said Ateev Mehrotra, a physician and professor of health services, policy, and practice at Brown University School of Public Health.
February 3, 2026 at 3:41 PM
brittanytrang.com
How HHS is implementing Trump AI mandates, in numbers

I take a look at the AI tools the nation's health agency is using for everything from controversial audits to helping the agency cope with layoffs & executive orders.

Full charts in the story @statnews.com:

www.statnews.com/2026/02/03/n...
February 3, 2026 at 3:24 PM
brittanytrang.com
1. Go to the general settings of your Gmail account
2. Leave "Smart features" ON but click on "Manage Workspace smart feature settings"
3. Toggle "Smart features in Google Workspace" OFF

This does turn off "show events from Gmail in Calendar," so you may want to be cautious if you like that feature
January 29, 2026 at 6:15 PM
brittanytrang.com
If anyone else's personal Gmail suddenly started giving AI summaries of your emails with no option to turn them off:

I already took the elevated blood pressure hit for you and figure out how to get rid of it WITHOUT getting rid of the multiple inboxes (which I personally need in order to function)
January 29, 2026 at 6:15 PM
brittanytrang.com
Please reshare! Here's the first in a series of science writing resources I'm posting to my website: A list of science writing/communication internships & fellowships.

brittanytrang.com/science-jour...

#sciencejournalism #scicomm #scicommjobs #journojobs #sciencewriting #sciwri #stem
Screenshot reading: Science Journalism Fellowships and Internships This is a non-exhaustive list of science journalism / science communications internships and fellowships one might reasonably apply to with minimal formal experience (e.g., as a student) or with one fellowship (e.g., the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship) and some freelancing under one’s belt. Science journalism fellowships AAAS Mass Media Fellowship Summer internship (June – August) for STEM undergrad students, grad students, postdocs, residents, deadline Jan 1 Based at sites around the country Nature News Two 6-month internships: Jan – June (deadline in October), July – Dec
January 29, 2026 at 12:48 AM
brittanytrang.com
Do you, like me, feel like the news is trying its best to kill you? Fear not, I am standing in front of the firehose of #healthAI 🩺🖥️ news for you.

I present you with some tidy buckets of important health and biotech AI news you may have missed over the last month: www.statnews.com/2026/01/14/b...
Screenshot reading: ‘AI make number go up’ is going to be big this year If you’ve heard me say it once, you’ve heard me say it a million times: AI in health care is going to make costs go up, not down. Everybody is saying it now: In JAMA Health Forum, in NPJ Digital Medicine. HealthcareIT News reported that Intermountain got a seven-figure reimbursement boost in the first year of using Solventum’s AI clinical documentation integrity solution. Healthcare Finance reported that Baylor Scott and White Health expect to make an extra $42 million in net revenue after one year of using Accuity’s AI CDI and coding review tech, based on their data after six months. and a sidebar for a story that says: Related Story AI scribe companies promise to help doctors bill more. Who will pay the extra cost?
January 14, 2026 at 4:53 PM
brittanytrang.com
This is how fast health AI is moving: Between when I drafted this post on Monday and when it sent this morning, two of these 2026 #health #AI predictions basically became outdated.

(click in the below post to find out which ones they were!)
🖥️🩺
January 7, 2026 at 4:12 PM
brittanytrang.com
2. Seeing Hotline TNT play a laundromat.

Will Anderson knows how to put on a show. He forced us to crowd into the tiny venue side of Dirty Dungarees, & he was right. He forced us to put away our phones after 3 songs, & he was right. It was loud. A pit opened up at the end of the show. 💯, no notes.
December 31, 2025 at 4:22 PM
brittanytrang.com
My 10 favorite records from 2025, though I'm not wedded to this ordering.

Instead of championing an album of the year, I'm trying a new thing: my 5 favorite music moments of the year 👇🧵
Screenshot reading: 2025 Top Albums Raspberry Moon | Hotline TNT Revelation | The Knocks/Dragonette Losin' | Colin Miller The Yips | Petey USA Everything Must Go | Goose Dog-Eared | Billie Marten Patience, Moonbeam | Great Grandpa Blood on the Silver Screen | SASAMI Iron | Post Animal Chain Yer Dragon | Goose
December 31, 2025 at 4:22 PM
brittanytrang.com
Earlier this year, I asked more than 90 health AI experts what's on their bingo card for the rest of 2025.

Who gets to say "I told you so" now?

Our look back at what did and didn't happen in 2025:
www.statnews.com/2025/12/17/2...
🖥️🩺
December 17, 2025 at 2:16 PM
brittanytrang.com
We finally have randomized, controlled clinical trial results from ambient AI scribes. But what do these RCTs actually tell us?

Look at the below chart. Time savings are often low, but doctors give the technology rave reviews, esp in anecdotes that people tend to believe more than data 👀 🧵

🖥️🩺
December 3, 2025 at 4:56 PM
brittanytrang.com
In July, I asked health #AI experts what was on their bingo cards for the rest of 2025. Now it's time to see who was right.

Refresh yourself on the predictions: www.statnews.com/2025/07/02/w...

Vote by December 10: www.statnews.com/ai-prognosis...

🖥️🩺
November 26, 2025 at 3:39 PM
brittanytrang.com
Four years ago, we were @aaasmassmedia.bsky.social fellows, starry-eyed at our first full-time #sciencejournalism gigs.

Now, we're working dream/beyond-dream jobs at the New York Times, @cenmag.bsky.social and @statnews.com. 2021 us could not have imagined 2025 us.

#scicomm #stem #altchemjobs
November 12, 2025 at 1:59 PM
brittanytrang.com
Thrilled to meet my longtime #scicomm hero @ehmee.bsky.social at #SciWri25 today

and also shocked at how many people who would love her work have not heard of The Brain Scoop!

you simply MUST watch her series documenting taxidermying a wolf!! (TW: gross) youtube.com/playlist?lis...
🧪
November 8, 2025 at 3:34 AM
brittanytrang.com
Amid multiple studies showing that AI models aren't using medical reasoning to score well on medical board exams, radiation oncologist/Harvard AI researcher Danielle Bitterman really nails how the thinking about LLMs is flawed:

🩺🖥️
“Models just being able to memorize an answer doesn’t mean that they can generalize that information to related and nearby tasks, which is basically what we assume when we test humans on these exams,” she said. “We’re not assuming that they can only answer the questions on the exam — we’re saying, ‘Being able to answer the questions on this exam is a proxy for the general clinical knowledge base.’”
November 5, 2025 at 9:03 PM
brittanytrang.com
That escalated quickly...

The biggest story in health care AI right now has bypassed patient care and gone straight to the money.

Insurers and providers are duking it out over bills and claims with AI lightsabers. I predicted this back in the summer 👇

Let's take a closer look. 🧵
🩺🖥️
Screenshot reading: But Robinson also warned the technology will escalate the ongoing war between providers and insurers on billing that’s already resulting in an AI arms race. As health insurance companies see their profit margins decline because members are getting more care than anticipated, “the payers are not going to simply pay you more now,” he said. “They can’t.”
November 3, 2025 at 5:10 PM
brittanytrang.com
Happy Mole Day to all the chemists out there (and others who care!)

From 2021 me, who had access to a lab, here's exactly one mole of sodium hydroxide for your timeline:

#chemsky #science #MoleDay 🧪⚗️
A lot of white pellets sitting on a piece of weigh paper on an analytical balance reading "40.0070 g"
October 23, 2025 at 2:59 PM
brittanytrang.com
Thrilled to kick off NASW's #SciWri25 at the virtual plenary this Thursday! Our session will be about:

- what AI actually is
- what journalists need to know about it
- ideas about how to use it in your reporting

I'll be moderating the discussion at noon CT / 1 p ET on Oct 23. See you there!
ScienceWriters2025 Thursday Oct 23, 2025 / 12:00PM - 01:00PM "The Truth About AI: How to report on it without giving in to hype, and how to use it in the newsroom"
October 20, 2025 at 5:41 PM
brittanytrang.com
(Side note: these screenshots from a Pfizer ad the FDA complained about look like they were taken from a College Humor Hardly Working sketch....and when you look closer, that's literally Ross Bryant)
September 17, 2025 at 3:52 PM
brittanytrang.com
Unfortunately using a "-ai" filter does not work for me, as I am a health AI reporter (subscribe to my newsletter!) and often need to search for AI stuff.

Newsletter: www.statnews.com/signup/ai-pr...

Also, adding "-ai" does not turn off the AI overview 🙃
Screenshot of Google search results page for the search "rate limiting step kinetics -ai" with an AI overview at the top
September 15, 2025 at 3:25 PM
brittanytrang.com
Unfortunate news: I am here to tell you that the trick of including curse words in your Google search no longer disables the AI overview

(I usually include a much milder word but had to experiment to see if the results were different...they were not)
Screenshot of Google search results page for the search "rate limiting step kinetics fuck" with an AI overview at the top
September 15, 2025 at 3:25 PM
brittanytrang.com
Today is my 3-year STATiversary. I'll never forget getting an email from the NYT's Carl Zimmer as I took the Red Line to the STAT office the first time (pictured below!), asking me for an interview about my Science paper.

Weird way to start off a career as a reporter—getting interviewed yourself! 🧵
August 15, 2025 at 9:12 PM
brittanytrang.com
The most intriguing idea is the proposal to explore sequencing all life on federal lands to create data for a biological foundation model

(sounds kind of like Basecamp Research's model)
🩺🖥️🧬🧪
Explore the creation of a whole-genome sequencing program for life on Federal lands, led by the NSTC and including members of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, DOE, NIH, NSF, the Department of Interior, and Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units to collaborate on the development of an initiative to establish a whole genome sequencing program for life on Federal lands (to include all biological domains). This new data would be a valuable resource in training future biological foundation models.
July 23, 2025 at 5:19 PM
brittanytrang.com
This is also an interesting (maybe controversial) idea: Emphasizing datasets that are amenable to AI by using "what's the impact of datasets from your previous work" as a metric for grant funding, and requiring people to disclose datasets that are used in AI work that's federally funded
• Incentivize researchers to release more high-quality datasets publicly by considering the impact of scientific and engineering datasets from a researchers’ prior funded efforts in the review of proposals for new projects. • Require federally funded researchers to disclose non-proprietary, non-sensitive datasets that are used by AI models during the course of research and experimentation.
July 23, 2025 at 5:19 PM