Dr. Eric Topol - AI Overview

Chris Hogg has an incredibly diverse background. He studied molecular biology at Brown University, worked in a basic science lab, and then went to business school at Booth. Chris went on to work in healthcare investment banking and in biotech at Gilead before transitioning to digital health. He founded 100Plus, where he was able to successfully secure EMR data and government contracts to try and change human behavior. We discuss the challenges he faced at this startup and his eventual transition to Propeller Health, where he was the Chief Commercialization Officer.

Sean Duffy was in the MD/MBA program at Harvard when he left to start Omada Health, a digital health startup tackling chronic diseases like diabetes, obesity, and behavioral health. He leveraged his background in design-thinking from IDEO and technology from Google to build one of the most reputable startups in healthcare. We discuss how Omada has successfully sold to self-insured employers, embraced regulatory changes, estimated actuarial risk for value-based pricing, and applied AI to their data. Sean also talks about what's next for Omada, and what scale looks like for the company. Omada Health is the largest CDC-recognized provider of the National Diabetes Prevention Program, was named a 2016 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, and one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in 2017.

Neal Khosla is a serial entrepreneur with a background in computer science & artificial intelligence from Stanford and Google. In this episode, we discuss the unique challenges of working with various stakeholders in healthcare including providers, payors, investors, regulators, and (most importantly) patients. Despite more than $30b invested in digital health since 2011, we have not seen major disruption. Neal has incredible insight into why patient experience has not improved and how startups can navigate these challenges.

Dr. Spiegel is the Director of Health Services Research & Clinical Transformation at the Cedars-Sinai Health System. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Gastroenterology, the premiere GI journal. His lab, the Center for Outcomes Research, conducts research on how technology can improve healthcare and has received funding from the NIH, Veterans Affairs, and Robert-Wood Johnson Foundation.

Christina's work in healthcare gives her a unique perspective on the entrance of tech giants to this industry. We discuss the challenges faced by these large companies entering healthcare, what opportunities they are missing, and failed examples. She also speaks about the common attributes she's noticed when interviewing successful founders/investors and what they are looking for.

Tom Priselac has been the CEO of Cedars-Sinai for 25 years and overseen unprecedented transitions for the organization. As chair of the American Hospital Association he was also closely involved with President Obama in developing the ACA. We discuss his role in evaluating new technologies and what metrics they use in deciding which technologies to implement at Cedars. Mr. Priselac also discusses how he fits in time for learning and advice for startups looking to make an impact in healthcare.

Dr. Rob Califf is the former Commissioner of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), founding director of the world's largest academic research organization - the Duke Clinical Research Institute, and a professor at Duke and Stanford. He is one of the top 10 most cited medical authors, with more than 1,200 publications. Dr. Califf is also a senior health advisor for Google's life sciences division, Verily. We discuss the regulation of medical technology and the challenges of regulating AI.

Episode 1 of a three-part series on artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare. Dr. Eric Topol is the former chair of cardiology at Cleveland Clinic, best-selling author, and now director of the Scripps Translational Research Institute. We discuss current uses of AI in healthcare, future hurdles, social media, his personal story, and advice for early-stage physicians!