I recently had the privilege of participating in a panel discussion at Stanford University, organized by the Center for Social Innovation. With an audience of faculty and students from the Graduate School of Business and School of Medicine, the panel delved deep into the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in revolutionizing healthcare.
I was joined by esteemed colleagues from various disciplines:
- Dr. Kevin Schulman, Professor of Medicine and Associate Chair of Business Development and Strategy
- Dr. James Zou, Associate Professor of Biomedical Data Science and Faculty Director of Stanford AI4Health
- James Lee, MSx student, and the event’s moderator and organizer
Together, we explored the challenges, opportunities, and future implications of integrating generative AI into the healthcare sector.
During the discussion, I underscored the historical trajectory of technological breakthroughs, from the printing press to the internet, highlighting how each innovation has contributed to the accumulation of knowledge. However, I emphasized that with the emergence of generative AI, we are witnessing a profound shift: from merely providing people with knowledge to offering them expertise in the medical domain. This transformation promises invaluable benefits for patients, empowering them with unprecedented access to accurate medical diagnoses, clinical insights and treatment recommendations.
I also pointed out that there are different types of AI, from rule-based to narrow and generative AI and that people shouldn’t lump them all together, particularly in the context of medicine.
Unlike the rule-based and narrow AI tools, generative AI has broad applicability to all of healthcare, ranging from acute medical problems to chronic disease management and hospital at home programs.
Nevertheless, I stressed that along with the immense promise of generative AI comes significant challenges, too, including concerns of privacy, security, misinformation and bias. Addressing these issues will require a concerted effort to develop robust regulatory frameworks and ethical guidelines to ensure the responsible deployment of AI technologies.
One of the most optimistic aspects of our discussion was specific to the exponential growth trajectory of generative AI. In just five years, generative AI is projected to be 32 times more powerful—a testament to its transformative capabilities in reshaping the healthcare landscape. That’s like owning a bicycle today that in five years will be as fast and powerful as a car (and, in 10 years, a rocket ship). It’s nearly impossible for the human mind to grasp that trajectory, which means the potential for AI to transform medicine is incredible—even if the specifics are impossible to predict.
At the same time, I underscored that technology alone is not sufficient to drive meaningful change in healthcare. Effective leadership is paramount in navigating this journey, ensuring that technology integration is aligned with the overarching goal of improving patient care and addressing the affordability crisis in healthcare. By fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration, leaders can help harness the full potential of AI to create a more accessible, efficient, equitable and patient-centric healthcare system.
Ultimately, the combination of a dedicated clinician, an empowered patient and a generative AI application will be more reliable and effective than any one of the three alone.
At the end, the moderator, James Lee, asked me what it was like to write my new book, “ChatGPT, MD: How AI-Empowered Patients & Doctors Can Take Back Control of American Medicine” with ChatGPT as my co-author. I said that it was similar to writing a paper with a medical or business student. The totality of work doesn’t change, but the process produces insights that are broader in perspective and deeper in content.
For a more comprehensive exploration of these topics, I invite you to read James Lee’s new blog post, where I had the opportunity to expand on my research and to read the book itself. When you are done, please let me know what you think. See links to both here:
- The Future of Medicine: A Pearl of Wisdom (created by James Lee)
- Health Management, Policy and Innovation (edited Kevin Schulman)
- Scaling Adoption of Medical AI (an NEJM paper with James Zou)
- ChatGPT, MD: How AI Empowered Patients & Doctors Can Take Back Control of American Medicine (a book by Robert Pearl and ChatGPT)
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Dr. Robert Pearl is the former CEO of The Permanente Medical Group, the nation’s largest physician group. He’s a Forbes contributor, bestselling author, Stanford University professor, and host of two healthcare podcasts. Check out Pearl’s newest book, ChatGPT, MD: How AI-Empowered Patients & Doctors Can Take Back Control of American Medicine with all profits going to Doctors Without Borders.
