Healthcare AI's 'Giant Leap' with Dr. Bob Wachter – Healthcare AI Pioneers
Jesse chats with Dr. Bob Wachter, Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Together, they discuss Bob’s new book, A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future; why the current healthcare AI boom is different from the many past waves of health tech hype; unintended consequences of electronic health records and lessons from the EHR rollout that could guide AI deployment in healthcare; the balance between AI replacing doctors and assisting them; what’s preventing AI from reliably outperforming human clinicians; how healthcare systems can guard against automation bias; what healthcare could look like if this “giant leap” succeeds; and much more.
Get Bob’s new book, A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future.
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From BBC News: AI chatbots for medical advice can be risky and even dangerous, according to research from the University of Oxford.
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About Our Guest
Dr. Bob Wachter
Robert Wachter, MD is Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
Author of 300 articles and 6 books, he coined the term “hospitalist,” the fastest-growing medical specialty in U.S. history. He is past-president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, past-chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. In 2004, he received the John M. Eisenberg Award, the nation’s top honor in patient safety. Modern Healthcare magazine has ranked him as one of the 50 most influential physician-executives in the U.S. more than a dozen times; he was #1 on the list in 2015.
His 2015 book, The Digital Doctor, was a New York Times bestseller. His new book, A Giant Leap: How AI is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future, was published by Portfolio/Penguin in 2026.