Healthcare AI, Shame and Optimism

Quick Read - Link Below

The link below is an excellent quick read on 20+ firms helping move healthcare forward with AI.

Take a look at the hospital planning/appointment board picture!

I do think this is a bit overly optimistic when it says:

"Within the next couple of years, it will revolutionize every area of our life, including medicine."

Gen AI / AI - Don't go to the dark side

GenAi / AI will touch every area of life, but in many domains, especially healthcare, the initial impact and benefit will disproportionately fall to countries, regions, and people who have money. That may be for an extended period.

Near-term 'progress' will also, in many cases, focus more on medical areas where there is more money to be made. Treatment versus cure, old versus young, fat margin costly versus cheap and broad will have more gravitational pull, especially in economies with weak public good foundations and low public-private partnership efficacy. Think of Norway/Sweden versus US. Or just stack ranking countries by the very horrible index of the percentage of child population suffering from food insecurity times GDP per capita. I would just call that a Shame Index.

Gen AI / AI Unemployment

Many countries will also mismanage the gap between job elimination and job creation. Job elimination has started and is accelerating, but job creation will be far, far less and quite a while behind. A fresh post-election mandate may help mitigate this in the US. We'll see. Maybe it is the genetic combo of the best bits from the Manhattan Project and Kennedy's original moonshot. To be clear, job elimination isn't the type of jobs disappearing; it's the number of people needed.

GenAI will make these people way more productive: programmers, entry-level lawyers, most of the marketing department, consultants, newly minted MBAs, product managers, HR specialists, sales and customer service reps, etc. So, let's say we have 100,000 of those at 50 random companies. If GenAI makes them just 25% more productive, I really can eliminate 25,000 of them through attrition, scaled-back hiring, and firing. That is the reality.

I recently spoke to a top Professor at a top-five computer science/Engineering school, and he said it was the worst year for grads finding jobs he had ever seen.

Optimism - Structural Shape of Firm Change

GenAI/AI will change healthcare. It will change faster than most people think. A lot of future underperforming firms will die sooner than expected. That is good.

I am optimistic we can also change the economic model.

I am starting as the Chairman of a stealth health company out of the UK that will also aspire to change what a truly effective model of the firm is in this space. It will be harder to do, require innovative smart focus and architecture but it will be economically better. Winning brands in the not-too-distant future, especially with GenZ, will have to clearly and transparently earn client trust that the clients' best interests and the best interests of their communities are the primary drivers of the firm. A win-win that will show up in cost of sales, revenue, margin and customer lifetime value. Our firm will be anchored in that and these items:

1. Science-infused, anchored, honest and leveraging the leading edge. With globally respected scientific leadership.

2. Patient and community first foundation. We will be trusted to always, always do what is in the best interest of clients and community. We will never, ever, ever put profits ahead of patients, as we have recently seen far too much. (Just ask ChatGPT 4o for examples in the healthcare - keyword 'fines' ). We believe innovative architecture, design, and leadership solve this. It will be harder, but it will be a better model with an unassailable brand.

3. Structurally and legally bound to give a slice of equity and profits to charity with no strings attached (Child Diabetes in this case).

4. Architected for equity impact and smart public-private partnerships. Architected and designed for human life cycles not wallet share/spend.

5. Immersed in Toby's 10Ps, which I have shared in my Uni lectures, board talks, and conference chats. These are the outcomes of doing AI and tech well with the right leadership. Imagine healthcare that is:

Proactive, Preventative, Process Performant, Personalized, Pattern Matched, Peer Connected, Precise, Predictive, Permissioned, and Pragmatic.***

(***way back when in a golf cart with beer and cigars John Sviokla added one of those P's and Chunka Mui another at a smart think tank thing)