Practical AI in Healthcare

A lone baker cracking an egg at a small table under a spotlight on a dark, empty theater stage, symbolizing "judgment theater" and human oversight in healthcare AI adoption.

When the Machine Is Almost Always Right, Who Is Still Thinking?

Every few episodes we stop interviewing and start synthesizing. This is our seventh Reflections episode...
A large crowd of runners competing on a track, metaphorically representing healthcare's rushed adoption of ambient AI scribes and ambient documentation.

Healthcare Skipped Its Early Adopters

Every technology healthcare ever adopted arrived on the same schedule. A bleeding-edge 5% went first,...
A person in work boots on a concrete ledge preparing to step onto a paper bridge over fog, symbolizing the fragile gap between basic AI literacy and practical healthcare AI implementation.

AI Literacy Is Not a Pamphlet

Chris Dymek started in philosophy. She passed her doctoral exams, looked at friends taking one-year...
Conceptual illustration of symbolic AI and human review in healthcare: a researcher stamps an approved paper at the base of a paper tornado representing clinical trial data.

The AI That Refuses to Guess

Scroll wellness social media at one in the morning, as Renee Deehan admits she sometimes...
Surreal landscape showing a clinician in a white coat, overwhelmed, facing a giant tsunami wave composed of medical paperwork and data, a conceptual illustration of healthcare information overload and burnout.

Build With How Clinicians Think, or Build Against Them

Most conversations about clinical AI start with the algorithm. Dr. Vimla Patel would rather start...
Conceptual hero image for healthcare AI safety featuring Dr. Peter Embi’s silhouette next to an open, malfunctioning control panel with a red alarm light, representing the monitoring of clinical algorithms and medical AI drift.

The Doctor Who Diagnosed Himself  — and Now Wants to Watch the Algorithms

Peter Embí opens his own keynotes with a patient case. The patient is him. For...
A patient using a smart card at a medical card reader terminal with a glowing green light, symbolizing EHR data interoperability, healthcare information technology, and the transfer of electronic health records.

Records Travel, But They Don’t Translate: The Interoperability Shift Nobody Noticed

For two decades, interoperability was the slide nobody believed. Every conference, the same data silos,...
A close-up of a weathered hand picking a smooth, glowing amber stone from a pile of beach seaweed and driftwood. This visual metaphor represents finding real-world evidence and human judgment in healthcare AI data synthesis.

After Five Episodes, What Still Has to Be Human?

Every few episodes, we stop interviewing and start synthesizing. This is our sixth Reflections episode,...
Conceptual image for medical AI bias featuring a physician's white lab coat, a patient gown, and a corporate business suit jacket, illustrating how system prompts shift AI healthcare recommendations between doctors and insurance companies.

The Man Who Freed the Data Is Now Measuring Its Values

When you give a 13-year-old's growth-hormone case to GPT-4 and tell it "you're a pediatric...
An illustration demonstrating gaps in patient communication and clinical AI. Three people walk away from a medical clinic with distinct thought bubbles: a man checking a healthcare app, a woman holding a grocery bag planning a healthy diet, and an older patient cheering about being allowed to eat cake.

The Patient Is the Forgotten End-User of Clinical AI

When Fred Bennett's father came home from a cardiology follow-up, the family held an impromptu...