Christopher A. Longhurst, MD

Reading scores, 3rd graders to 8th graders, 2015 to 2025. This is a national tragedy.

The Australia social media age of 16 policy (for account creation, not viewing content!) is working as expected––usage declined substantially in the first stage, and is likely to decline further as Australia presses the companies to do better. (That will get ever easier as the tech for effective and privacy preserving methods improves, now that there’s a big market for it). A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and Australia took that first step. Many more steps to come, and many more countries are setting out on that path. I want to applaud @CassSunstein and Leonardo Bursztyn for highlighting something I definitely agree with: "Tipping points can be crossed, as the smoking decline shows. The lesson there is that laws are most likely to change behavior when norms move with them." We need to change societal norms and incentives if we want laws like this to succeed. They offer great advice for the countries that are setting out on the path to get a faster start. nytimes.com/2026/05/08/opi…

@bmj_latest @jonc101x @DrMikePfeffer @bmj_company @BMJDigitalGroup @zakkohane @RuthReader @histalk @statnews @StanfordMed @DBMI_UCSD @UCSDHealth Why are humans still in the loop with advancing AI capabilities? 🤖 Read our latest @bmj_latest article at bmjdigitalhealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e0…

Why are humans still in the loop with advancing AI capabilities? 🤖 TLDR; Unlimited medical knowledge attached to a friendly bedside manner is still not enough to make a functioning clinician! 🐕‍🦺🎙️ Read more in @bmj_latest (link below) with @jonc101x and @DrMikePfeffer

After meeting to discuss a path forward, the Laurelhurst Community Council (LCC) has agreed to fully support Children’s as it seeks city approval to end the Medical Review Committee for helicopter landings. 🚁🧡💙 Read the full statement: bit.ly/4dxW5q0

We appreciate support of the Laurelhurst community, @MayorofSeattle, and the public as we seek to end oversight of our helicopter landings. This is terrific news for kids and the outpouring of support for @SeattleChildren shows how our community can make a difference. 🚁🧡

At @JAMA_current today, 2 radiologists publish what should be the consent form for a total body MRI in healthy people Note: "no major medical society recommends whole-body MRI screening in the general population because it is unproven, and the harms likely outweigh the benefits." jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…

#GiveBIG starts tomorrow, May 5. Help us deliver superior patient care regardless of their family's ability to pay, and donate! We’re teaming up with @VECAElectric. Your gifts will be matched — tripling your impact up to $50,000. wagives.org/organization/s…

@Gabe__MD Why are humans still in the loop with advancing AI capabilities? bmjdigitalhealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e0…

A study published today in Science may be the most important AI paper in clinical medicine this year. And it happened to land on the same day I submitted a letter to JAMA arguing that AI can already deliver clinically adequate care for defined tasks. Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center ran six experiments pitting OpenAI's o1 reasoning model against hundreds of physicians across the full spectrum of clinical reasoning: differential diagnosis, management planning, probabilistic reasoning, and clinical documentation. Then they did something most AI studies don't. They tested it on 76 real, unstructured emergency department cases pulled directly from the medical record at a major academic medical center. The results across all six experiments: the AI outperformed physicians. On the real ER cases — the messiest, most clinically relevant test — the AI identified the correct or very close diagnosis in 67.1% of cases at initial triage, 72.4% at ER physician evaluation, and 81.6% at hospital admission. The two attending physicians scored 55.3% and 50.0% at triage, 61.8% and 52.6% at ER evaluation, and 78.9% and 69.7% at admission. The gap was widest at initial triage. On management reasoning using expert-scored clinical vignettes, the AI scored a median of 89%. Physicians with conventional resources scored 34%. That is not a typo. The physician evaluators were blinded and could not distinguish AI-generated differentials from human ones. One evaluator guessed correctly 15% of the time. The other guessed correctly 3% of the time. I'm an emergency physician. I work in a rural Texas ED. These are my cases. These are my decision points. And I can tell you that the triage finding is the one that matters most. Triage is where the least information meets the highest stakes — where the wrong call means a patient sits in the waiting room while their sepsis progresses or their STEMI evolves. The AI was 12 to 17 percentage points better than experienced attendings at exactly that moment. The authors are careful to note this is text-based reasoning only; the AI doesn't see the patient's distress, doesn't hear breath sounds, doesn't read the room. Those are real limitations today. But the cognitive reasoning component of emergency medicine — pattern recognition under uncertainty with incomplete data — is precisely what this model is demonstrating it can do. This was published in Science. Not a preprint. Not a company blog post. Peer-reviewed, in one of the two most prestigious scientific journals in the world. The profession needs to stop debating whether AI will be good enough. It needs to start planning for the fact that, for an expanding set of clinical reasoning tasks, it already is. And yes, this was written with AI. Sorry!!

Read Seattle Children's statement here: seattlechildrens.org/media/press-re…

Seattle Children’s performs more congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) repairs than any other hospital in the Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho region. Our high-volume experience means better care for your baby. We are proud to be a leader in CDH surgery. bit.ly/3L7weHu

Thank you @RepKimSchrier and @RepJohnJoyce for introducing bipartisan legislation to expand childhood vaccine access through the Vaccines for Children Program ⤵️

Honored to be part of the world class team at @seattlechildren! Thank you to the entire organization for a terrific first 100 days - here’s to the future of providing hope, care and cures to help every child live the healthiest and most fulfilling life possible

Welcome to Seattle and the @seattlestorm! 🏀

What if we started thinking of mRNA-CRISPR gene editing as molecular surgery, not as a pharmaceutical product? Excellent @nytimes guest essay ⤵️ nytimes.com/2026/04/09/opi…

Earthset. The Artemis II crew captured this view of an Earthset on April 6, 2026, as they flew around the Moon. The image is reminiscent of the iconic Earthrise image taken by astronaut Bill Anders 58 years earlier as the Apollo 8 crew flew around the Moon.

“You can see the surface of the Moon…we just went sci-fi.” On flight day seven, images from our @NASAArtemis II crew amazed, turning science fiction to reality. From the lunar far side to a solar eclipse from the Moon, the views are EVERYTHING. No pressure to pick a favorite.

Making new friends & giving back 🩵 It's always a wonderful time hanging out with the kiddos at @seattlechildren! Thank you for letting us swing by while we were back in town!

Teens are turning to AI for connection. Yolanda Evans, MD, of Seattle Children's, shares with KOMO News what families should know. bit.ly/3PEZH09