Monthly Archives: April 2025

Transcript

“In healthcare settings, keeping a human in the loop looks like the solution, at least for now, to GPT-4’s less-than 100% accuracy. But years of bitter experience with ‘Dr. Google’ and the COVID ‘misinfodemic’ show that it matters which humans are in the loop, and that leaving patients to their own electronic devices can be rife with pitfalls. Yet because GPT-4 appears to be such an extraordinary tool for mining humanity’s store of medical information, there’s no question members of the public will want to use it that way—a lot.” 

This is The AI Revolution in Medicine, Revisited. I’m your host, Peter Lee.  

Shortly after OpenAI’s GPT-4 was publicly released, Carey Goldberg, Dr. Zak Kohane, and I published The AI Revolution in Medicine to help educate the world of healthcare and medical research about the transformative impact this new generative AI technology could have. But because we wrote the book when GPT-4 was still a secret, we had to speculate. Now, two years later, what did we get right, and what did we get wrong?   

In this series, we’ll talk to clinicians, patients, hospital administrators, and others to understand the reality of AI in the field and where we go from here. 

The passage I read at the top there is from Chapter 5, “The AI-Augmented Patient,” which Carey wrote.  

People have forever turned to the internet and sites like WebMD, Healthline, and so on to find health information and advice. So it wouldn’t be too surprising to witness a significant portion of people refocus those efforts around tools and apps powered by generative AI. Indeed, when we look at our search and advertising businesses here at Microsoft, we find that healthcare is in the top three most common categories of queries by consumers. 

When we envision AI’s potential impact on the patient experience, in our book, we suggested that it could potentially be a lifeline, especially for those without easy access to adequate healthcare; a research partner to help people make sense of existing providers and treatments; and even maybe act as a third member of a care team that has traditionally been defined by the doctor-patient relationship. This also could have a huge impact on venture capitalists in the tech sector who traditionally have focused on consumer-facing technologies.  

In this episode, I’m pleased to welcome Dave deBronkart and Christina Farr.  

Dave, known affectionately online as “e-Patient Dave,” is a world-leading advocate for empowering patients. Drawing on his experience as a survivor of stage 4 cancer, Dave gave a viral TED talk on patient engagement and wrote the highly rated book Let Patients Help! Dave was the Mayo Clinic’s visiting professor in internal medicine in 2015, has spoken at hundreds of conferences around the globe, and today runs the Patients Use AI blog on Substack. 

Chrissy puts her vast knowledge of the emerging digital and health technology landscape to use as a managing director with Manatt Health, a company that works with health systems, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, government policymakers, and other stakeholders to advise on strategy and technology adoption with the goal of improving human health. Previously, she was a health tech reporter and on-air contributor for CNBC, Fast Company, Reuters, and other renowned news organizations and publications. 

Hardly a week goes by without a news story about an ordinary person who managed to address their health problems—maybe even save their lives or the lives of their loved ones, including in some cases their pets—through the use of a generative AI system like ChatGPT. And if it’s not doing something as dramatic as getting a second opinion on a severe medical diagnosis, the empowerment that people feel when an AI can help decode an indecipherable medical bill or report or get advice on what to ask a doctor, well, those things are both meaningful and a daily reality in today’s AI world. 

And make no mistake—such consumer empowerment could mean business, really big business, and this means that investors in new ventures are smart to be taking a close look at all this.  

For these and many other reasons, I am thrilled to pair the perspectives offered by e-Patient Dave and Chrissy Farr together for this episode.

Here is my interview with Dave deBronkart: 

LEE: Dave, it’s just a thrill and honor to have you join us. 

DAVE DEBRONKART: It’s a thrill to be alive. I’m really glad that good medicine saved me, and it is just unbelievable, fun, and exciting and stimulating to be in a conversation with somebody like you. 

LEE: Likewise. Now, we’re going to want to get into both the opportunities and the challenges that patients face. But before that, I want to talk a little bit and delve a little bit more into you, yourself. I, of course, know you as this amazing speaker and advocate for patients. But you have had actually a pretty long career and history prior to all this. And so can you tell us a little bit about your background? 

DEBRONKART: I’ll go back all the way to when I first got out of college. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I grew up. So I got a job where I … basically, I used my experience working on the school paper to get a temporary job. It was in type setting, if you can believe that. [LAUGHTER] And, man, a few years later, that became the ultimate lesson in disruptive innovation.  

LEE: So you were actually doing movable type? Setting type?  

DEBRONKART: Oh, no, that was, I was … I’m not that old, sir! [LAUGHTER] The first place where I worked, they did have an actual Linotype machine and all that.  

LEE: Wow. 

DEBRONKART: Anyway, one thing led to another. A few years after I got that first job, I was working for the world’s biggest maker of typesetting machines. And I did product marketing, and I learned how to speak to audiences of all different sorts. And then desktop publishing came along, as I say. And it’s so funny because, now mind you, this was 10 years before Clay Christensen wrote The Innovator’s Dilemma (opens in new tab). But I had already lived through that because here we were. We were the journeymen experts in our noble craft that had centuries of tradition as a background. Is this reminding you of anything? 

The clueless people gained experience, and they also started expressing what they wanted the software to be. The important thing is today everybody uses fonts. It’s no longer a secret profession. Things are done differently, but there is more power in the hands of the end user. 

LEE: Yeah, I think it’s so interesting to hear that story. I didn’t know that about your background. And I think it sheds some light on hopefully what will come out later as you have become such, I would call you a fierce consumer advocate. 

DEBRONKART: Sure, energetic, however, whatever you want to call it, sure. [LAUGHTER] Seriously, Peter, what I always look to do … so this is a mixture of my having been run over by a truck during disruptive innovation, all right, but then also looking at that experience from a marketing perspective: how can I convey what’s happening in a way that people can hear? Because you really don’t get much traction as an advocate if you come in and say, you people are messed up.  

LEE: Right. So, now I know this gets into something fairly personal, but you’ve actually been remarkably public about this. You became very ill.  

DEBRONKART: Yes.  

LEE: And of course, I suspect some of the listeners to this podcast probably have followed your story, but many have not. So can we go a little bit through that … 

DEBRONKART: Sure.  

LEE: … just to give our listeners a sense of how this has formed some of your views about the healthcare system. 

DEBRONKART: So late in 2006, I went in for my annual physical with my deservedly famous primary care physician, Danny Sands at Beth Israel [Deaconess Medical Center] in Boston. And in the process—I had moved away for a few years, so I hadn’t seen him for a while—I did something unusual. I came into the visit with a preprinted letter with 13 items I wanted to go over with him.   

LEE: What made you do that? Why did you do that? 

DEBRONKART: I have always been, even before I knew the term exists, I was an engaged patient, and I also very deeply believe in partnership with my physicians. And I respected his time. I had all these things, because I hadn’t seen him for three years … 

LEE: Yeah. 

DEBRONKART: … all these things I wanted to go through. To me it was just if I walked into a business meeting with a bunch of people that I hadn’t seen for three years and I want to get caught up, I’d have an agenda. 

LEE: It’s so interesting to hear you say this because I’m very similar to you. I like to do my own research. I like to come in with checklists. And do you ever get a sense like I do that sometimes that makes your doctor a little uncomfortable? 

DEBRONKART: [LAUGHS] Well, you know, so sometimes it does make some doctors uncomfortable and that touches on something that right now is excruciatingly important in the culture change that’s going on. I’ve spent a lot of time as I worked on the culture change from the patient side, I want to empathize, understand what’s going on in the doctor’s head. Most doctors are not trained in medical school or later, how do you work with a patient who behaves like you or me, you know?  

And in the hundreds of speeches that I’ve given, I’ve had quite a range of reactions from doctors afterwards. I’ve had doctors come up to me and say, “This is crap.” I mean, right to my face, right. “I’ll make the decisions. I’ll decide what we’re going to talk about.” And now my thought is, OK, and you’re not going to be my doctor. 

LEE: Yeah. 

DEBRONKART: I want to be responsible for how the time is spent, and I didn’t want be fumbling for words during the visit. 

LEE: Right. 

DEBRONKART: So I said, I’ve got among other things … one of the 13 things was I had a stiff shoulder. So he ordered a shoulder x-ray, and I went and got the shoulder x-ray.  

And I will never forget this. Nine o’clock the next morning, he called me, and I can still—this is burned into my memory—I can see the Sony desk phone with 0900 for the time. He said, “Dave, your shoulder’s going to be fine. I pulled up the x-ray on my screen at home. It’s just a rotator cuff thing, but Dave, something else showed up. There’s something in your lung that shouldn’t be there.”  

And just by total luck, what turned out to be a metastasis of kidney cancer was in my lung next to that shoulder. He immediately ordered a CAT scan. Turned out there were five tumors in both lungs, and I had stage 4 kidney cancer.  

LEE: Wow.  

DEBRONKART: And on top of that, back then—so this was like January of 2007—back then, there was much less known about that disease than there is now.  

LEE: Right. 

DEBRONKART: There were no studies—zero research on people like me—but the best available study said that for somebody with my functional status, my median survival was 24 weeks. Half the people like me would be dead in five and a half months. 

LEE: So that just, you know, I can’t imagine, you know, how I would react in this situation. And what were your memories of the interaction then between you and your doctor? You know, how did your doctor engage with you at that time? 

DEBRONKART: I have very vivid memories. [LAUGHS] Who was it? I can’t remember what famous person said, “Nothing focuses the mind like the knowledge that one is to be hanged in a fortnight,” right. But 24 weeks does a pretty good job of it.  

And I … just at the end of that phone call where he said I’m going to order a CAT scan, I said, “Is there anything I should do?” Like I was thinking, like, go home and make sure you don’t eat this sort of this, this, that, or the other thing.  

LEE: Right. 

DEBRONKART: And what he said was, “Go home and have a glass of wine with your wife.” 

LEE: Yeah. 

DEBRONKART: Boy, was that sobering. But then it’s like, all right, game on. What are we going to do? What are my options? And a really important thing, and this, by the way, this is one reason why I think there ought to be a special department of hell for the people who run hospitals and other organizations where they think all doctors are interchangeable parts. All right. My doctor knew me. 

LEE: Yeah. 

DEBRONKART: And he knew what was important to me. So when the biopsy came back and said, “All right, this is definitely stage 4, grade 4 renal cell carcinoma.” He knew me enough … he said, “Dave, you’re an online kind of guy. You might like to join this patient community that I know of.” This was 2007.  

LEE: Yeah. 

DEBRONKART: It’s a good quality group. This organization that barely exists. 

LEE: That’s incredibly progressive, technologically progressive for that time. 

DEBRONKART: Yeah, incredibly progressive. Now, a very important part of the story is this patient community is just a plain old ASCII listserv. You couldn’t even do boldface, right. And this was when the web was … web 2.0 was just barely being created, but what it was, was a community of people who saw the problems the way I see the problems. God bless the doctors who know all the medical stuff, you know. And they know the pathology and the morphology and whatever it is they all know.  

And I’m making a point here of illustrating that I am anything but medically trained, right. And yet I still, I want to understand as much as I can.  

I was months away from dead when I was diagnosed, but in the patient community, I learned that they had a whole bunch of information that didn’t exist in the medical literature. 

Now today we understand there’s publication delays; there’s all kinds of reasons. But there’s also a whole bunch of things, especially in an unusual condition, that will never rise to the level of deserving NIH [National Institute of Health] funding, right … 

LEE: Yes. 

DEBRONKART: … and research. And as it happens, because of the experience in that patient community, they had firsthand experience at how to survive the often-lethal side effects of the drug that I got. And so I talked with them at length and during my treatment, while I was hospitalized, got feedback from them. And several years later my oncologist, David McDermott, said in the BMJ [British Medical Journal], he said, “You were really sick. I don’t know if you could have tolerated enough medicine if you hadn’t been so prepared.” 

Now there is a case for action, for being actively involved, and pointing towards AI now, doing what I could to learn what I could despite my lack of medical education. 

LEE: But as you were learning from this patient community these things, there had to be times when that came into conflict with the treatment plan that you’re under. That must have happened. So first off, did it? And how were those conflicts resolved? 

DEBRONKART: So, yes, it did occasionally because in any large population of people you’re going to have differences of opinion. Now, before I took any action—and this closely matches the current thought of human in the loop, right—before I took any action based on the patient community, I checked with my clinicians.  

LEE: Were there times when there were things that … advice you were getting from the patient community that you were very committed to, personally, but your official, formal caregivers disagreed with? 

DEBRONKART: No, I can’t think of a single case like that. Now, let me be clear. My priority was: save my ass, keep me alive, you know? And if I thought a stranger at the other end of an internet pipe had a different opinion from the geniuses at my hospital—who the whole patient community had said, this is maybe the best place in the world for your disease— 

LEE: Yes. 

DEBRONKART: I was not going to go off and have some philosophical debate about epistemology and all of that stuff. And remember, the clock was ticking. 

LEE: Well, in fact, there’s a reason why I keep pressing on this point. It’s a point of curiosity because in the early days of GPT-4, there was an episode that my colleague and friend Greg Moore, who’s a neuroradiologist, had with a friend of his that became very ill with cancer.  

And she went in for treatment and the treatment plan was a specific course of chemotherapy, but she disagreed with that. She wanted a different type of, more experimental immunotherapy. And that disagreement became intractable to the point that the cancer specialists that were assigned to treat her asked Greg, “Can you talk to her and explain, you know, why we think our decision is best?”  

And the thing that was remarkable is Greg decided to use that case as one of the tests in the early development days of GPT-4 and had a conversation to explain the situation. They went back and forth. GPT-4 gave some very useful advice to Greg on what to say and how to frame it.  

And then, when Greg finally said, “You know, thank you for the help.” What floored both me and Greg is GPT-4 said, “You’re welcome. But, Greg, what about you? Are you getting all the support that you need? Here are some resources.”  

And, you know, I think we can kind of take that kind of behavior for granted today, and there have been some published studies about the seeming empathy of generative AI. 

But in those early days, it was eerie, it was awe-inspiring, it was disturbing—you know, all of these things at once. And that’s essentially why I’m so curious about your experiences along these lines. 

DEBRONKART: That’s like, that’s the flip side of the famous New York Times reporter who got into a late-night discussion …  

LEE: Oh, Kevin Roose, yes. [LAUGHTER] 

DEBRONKART: You say you’re happy in your marriage, but I think you’re not.  

LEE: Right. 

DEBRONKART: It’s like, whoa, this is creepy. But you know, it’s funny because one of the things that’s always intrigued me, partly because of my professional experience at explaining technology to people, is the early messaging around LLMs [large language models], which I still hear people … The people who say, “Well, wait a minute, these things hallucinate, so don’t trust them.” Or they say, “Look, all it’s doing is predicting the next word.”  

But there are loads of nuances, … 

LEE: Yes.  

DEBRONKART: … and that’s, I mean, it takes an extraordinary amount of empathy, not just for the other person’s feelings, but for their thought process … 

LEE: Hmm, yes. Yeah. 

DEBRONKART: … to be able to express that. Honestly, that is why I’m so excited about the arriving future. One immensely important thing … as I said earlier, I really respect my doctors’ time—“doctors” plural—and it breaks my heart that the doctors who did all this work to get license and all that stuff are quitting the field because the economic pressures are so great. I can go home and spend as many hours as I want asking it questions. 

LEE: Yes.  

DEBRONKART: All right. I’ve recently learned a thing to do after I have one of these hours-long sessions, I’ll say to it, “All right, so if I wanted to do this in a single-shot prompt, how would you summarize this whole conversation?” So having explored with no map, I end up with a perspective that it just helps me see the whole thing … 

LEE: Yes. Yeah, that’s brilliant. 

DEBRONKART: … without spending a moment of the doctor’s time.

LEE: Yeah, yeah. So when was the first time that you used, you know, generative AI?

DEBRONKART: It had to be February or March of whatever the first year was.  

LEE: Yeah. And was it the New York Times article that piqued your interest?  

DEBRONKART: Oh absolutely. 

LEE: Yeah. And so what did you think? Were you skeptical? Were you amazed? What went through your mind? 

DEBRONKART: Oh, no, no, no. It blew my mind. And I say that as somebody who emerged from the 1960s and ’70s, one of the original people who knew what it was to have your mind blown back in the psychedelic era. [LAUGHTER] No, it blew my mind. And it wasn’t just the things it said; it was the implications of the fact that it could do that.  

I did my first programming with BASIC or Fortran. I don’t know, something in the mid-’60s, when I was still in high school. So I understand, well, you know, you got to tell it exactly what you want it to do or it’ll do the wrong thing. So, yeah, for this to be doing something indistinguishable from thinking—indistinguishable from thinking—was completely amazing. And that immediately led me to start thinking about what this would mean in the hands of a sick person. And, you know, my particular area of fascination in medicine—everything I use it for these days is mundane—but the future of a new world of medicine and healthcare is one where I can explore and not be limited to things where you can read existing answers online. 

LEE: Right. So if you had GPT-4 back in 2006, 2007, when you were first diagnosed with your renal cancer, how would things have been different for you? Would things have been different for you? 

DEBRONKART: Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy. This is going to have to be just a swag because, I mean, for it to—you mean, if it had just dropped out of thin air?  

LEE: Yes. [LAUGHS] 

DEBRONKART: Ah, well, that’s … that’s even weirder. First thing we in the patient community would have to do is figure out what this thing does … 

LEE: Yeah. 

DEBRONKART: … before we can start asking it questions.  

Now, Peter, a large part of my evangelism, you know, there’s a reason why my book (opens in new tab) and my TED talk (opens in new tab) were titled “Let Patients Help.” 

I really am interested in planting a thought in people’s minds, and it’s not covert. I come right out and say it in the title of the book, right, planting a thought that, with the passage of time, will hold up as a reasonable thing to do. And same thing is true with AI. So … and I’ve been thinking about it that way from the very beginning. I never closed the loop on my cancer story. I was diagnosed in January, and I had my last drop of high-dose interleukin—experimental immunotherapy, right—in July. And that was it. By September, they said, looks like you beat it. And I was all done.  

And there’s the question: how could it be that I didn’t die? How could it be that valuable information could exist and not be in the minds of most doctors? Not be in the pages of journals?  

And if you think of it that way, along the way, I became a fan of Thomas Kuhn’s famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (opens in new tab).  

LEE: Yes. 

DEBRONKART: When something that the paradigm says could not happen does happen, then responsible thinkers have to say, the paradigm must be wrong. That’s the stage of science that he called a crisis. So if something came along back in 2006, 2007, I would have to look at it and say, “This means we’ve got to rethink our assumptions.” 

LEE: Yes. You know, now with the passage of time, you know, over the last two years, we’ve seen so many stories like this, you know, where people have consulted AI for a second opinion, … 

DEBRONKART: Sure. 

LEE: … maybe uploaded their labs and so on and gotten a different diagnosis, a different treatment suggestion. And in several cases that have been reported, both in medical journals and in the popular press, it’s saved, it has saved lives. And then your point about communities, during COVID pandemic, even doctors form communities to share information. A very famous example are doctors turning to Facebook and Twitter to share that if they had a COVID patient in severe respiratory distress, sometimes they could avoid intubation by …  

DEBRONKART: Pronation. Yeah. 

LEE: … pronation. And things like this end up being, in a way, I think the way you’re couching it, ways to work around the restrictions in the more formal healthcare system. 

DEBRONKART: The traditional flow. Yes. And there is nothing like a forest fire, an emergency, an unprecedented threat to make people drop the usual formal pathways. 

LEE: So, I’d like to see if we can impart from your wisdom and experience some advice for specific stakeholders. So, what do you say to a patient? What do you say to a doctor? What do you say to the executive in charge of a healthcare system? And then finally, what do you say to policymakers and regulators? So, let’s start with patients. 

DEBRONKART: So if you’ve got a problem that or a question where you really want to understand more than you’ve been able to, then give a try to these things. Ask some questions. And it’s not just the individual question and answer. The famous, amazing patient advocate, Hugo Campos, … 

LEE: Hmm, yes. 

DEBRONKART: … said something that I call “Hugo’s Law.” He said, “Dave, I don’t ask it for answers. I use it to help me think.” 

LEE: Yes, absolutely.  

DEBRONKART: So you get an answer and you say, “Well, I don’t understand this. What about that? Well, what if I did something different instead?” And never forget, you can come back three months later and say, “By the way, I just thought of something. What about that,” right.  

LEE: Yeah, yeah, fantastic. 

DEBRONKART: So be focused on what you want to understand.  

LEE: So now let’s go to a doctor or a nurse. What’s the advice there?  

DEBRONKART: Please try to imagine a world … I know that most people today are not as activated as I am in wanting to be engaged in their health. But to a very large extent, people, a lot of people, family and friends, have said they don’t want to do this because they don’t want to offend the doctors and nurses. Now, even if the doctor or nurse is not being a paternal jerk, all right, the patients have a fear of this. Dr. Sands handles this brilliantly. I mentioned it in the book. He proactively asks, are there any websites you’ve found useful?  

And you can do the same thing with AI. Have you done anything useful with ChatGPT or something like that?  

LEE: That actually suggests some curricular changes in medical schools in order to train doctors.  

DEBRONKART: Absolutely. In November, I attended a retreat on rethinking medical education. I couldn’t believe it, Peter. They were talking about how AI can be used in doing medical education. And I was there saying, “Well, hello. As long as we’re here, let’s rethink how you teach doctors, medical students to deal with somebody like me.” Cause what we do not want …  

There was just a study in Israel where it said 18% of adults use AI regularly for medical questions, which matches other studies in the US.  

LEE: Yep.  

DEBRONKART: But it’s 25% for people under 25. We do not want 10 years from now to be minting another crop of doctors who tells patients to stay off of the internet and AI.  

LEE: You know, it’s such an important point. Students, you know, entering into college to go on to medical school and then a residency and then finally into practice. I think you’re thinking about the year 2035 or thereabouts. And when you think of that, at least in tech industry terms, we’re going to be on Mars, we’re going to have flying cars, we’re going to have AGI [artificial general intelligence], and you really do need to think ahead. 

DEBRONKART: Well, you know, healthcare, and this speaks to the problems that health system executives are facing: y’all better watch out or you’re going to be increasingly irrelevant, all right.  

One of the key use cases, and I’m not kidding … I mean, I don’t mean that if I have stage 4 kidney cancer, I’m going to go have a talk with my robot. But one of the key use cases that makes people sit down and try to solve a problem on their own with an LLM is if they can’t get an appointment.  

LEE: Yes. 

DEBRONKART: Well, so let’s figure out, can the health system, can physicians and patients learn to work together in some modified way? Nobody I know wants to stop seeing a doctor, but they do need to have their problems solved.  

LEE: Yeah, yeah. 

DEBRONKART: And there is one vitally important thing I want to … I insist that we get into this, Peter. In order for the AI to perform to the best of its contribution, it needs to know all the data. 

LEE: Yes.  

DEBRONKART: Well, and so does the patient. Another super-patient, James Cummings, has two rare-genetic-mutation kids. (opens in new tab) He goes to four Epic-using hospitals. Those doctors can’t see each other’s data. So he compiles it, and he shows … the patient brings in the consolidated data. 

LEE: Yes. Well, and I know this is something that you’ve really been passionate about, and you’ve really testified before Congress on. But maybe then that leads to this fourth category of people who need advice, which are policymakers and regulators. What would you tell them? 

DEBRONKART: It’s funny, in our current political environment, there’s lots of debates about regulation, more regulation, less regulation. I’m heavily in favor of the regulations that say, yeah, I gotta be able to see and download my damn data, as I’m famous for calling it. But what we need to do if we were to have any more regulations is just mandate that you can’t keep the data away from people who need it. You can’t when … 

LEE: Yep. 

DEBRONKART: OK, consider one of the most famous AI-using patients is this incredible woman, Courtney Hofmann, whose son saw 17 doctors over three years (opens in new tab), and she finally sat down one night and typed it all into GPT. She has created a startup to try to automate the process of gathering everyone’s data.  

LEE: Yes, yes. Yeah. 

DEBRONKART: And I know people who have been trying to do this and it’s just really hard. Policy people should say, look, I mean, we know that American healthcare is unsustainable economically. 

LEE: Yes. 

DEBRONKART: And one way to take the pressure off the system—because it ain’t the doctors’ fault, because they’re burned out and quitting—one way to take the pressure off is to put more data in the hands of the patients so that entrepreneurs can make better tools. 

LEE: Yeah. All right. So, we’ve run out of time, but I want to ask one last provocative question to send us off. Just based on your life’s experience, which I think is just incredible and also your personal generosity in sharing your stories with such a wide audience, I think is incredible. It’s just doing so much good in the world. Do you see a future where AI effectively replaces human doctors? Do you think that’s a world that we’re heading towards? 

DEBRONKART: No, no, no, no. People are always asking me this. I do imagine an increasing base, an increasing if … maybe there’s some Venn diagram or something, where the number of things that I can resolve on my own will increase.  

LEE: Mm-hmm. Yes. 

DEBRONKART: And in particular, as the systems get more useful, and as I gain more savvy at using them and so on, there will be cases where I can get it resolved good enough before I can get an appointment, right. But I cannot imagine a world without human clinicians. Now, I don’t know what that’s going to look like, right.

LEE: Yes. [LAUGHS]

DEBRONKART: I mean, who knows what it’s going to be. But I keep having … Hugo blogged this incredible vision of where his agentic AI will be looking at one of these consolidated blob medical records things, and so will his doctor’s agentic AI. 

LEE: Yes. Well, I think I totally agree with you. I think there’ll always be a need and a desire for the human connection. Dave, this has been an incredible, really at times, riveting conversation. And as I said before, thank you for being so generous with your personal stories and with all the activism and advocacy that you do for patients. 

DEBRONKART: Well, thank you. I’m, as I said at the beginning, I’m glad to be alive and I’m really, really, really grateful to be given a chance to share my thoughts with your audience because I really like super smart nerds.  
 
[LAUGHTER] No, well, no kidding. In preparing for this, I listened to a bunch of back podcast episodes, “Microsoft Research,” “NEJM AI.” They talk about things I do not comprehend and don’t get me started on quantum, right? [LAUGHTER] But I’m grateful and I hope I can contribute some guidance on how to solve the problem of the person for whom the industry exists. 

LEE: Yeah, you absolutely have done that. So thank you. 

E-Patient Dave is so much fun to talk to. His words and stories are dead serious, including his openness about his struggles with cancer. But he just has a way of engaging with the world with such activism and positivity. The conversation left me at least with a lot of optimism about what AI will mean for the consumer.  

One of the key takeaways for me is Dave’s point that sometimes informal patient groups have more up-to-date knowledge than doctors. One wonders whether AI will make these sorts of communities even more effective in the near future. It sure looks like it.  

And as I listen to Dave’s personal story about his bout with cancer, it’s a reminder that it can be lifesaving to do your own research, but ideally to do so in a way that also makes it possible to work with your caregivers. Healthcare, after all, is fundamentally a collaborative activity today. 

Now, here’s my conversation with Christina Farr: 

LEE: Chrissy, welcome. I’m just thrilled that you’ve joined us here. 

CHRISTINA FARR: Peter, I’m so excited to be here. Thanks for having me on. 

LEE: One thing that our listeners should know is you have a blog called Second Opinion (opens in new tab). And it’s something that I read religiously. And one of the things you wrote (opens in new tab) a while ago expressed some questions about as an investor or as a founder of a digital health company, if you don’t use the words AI prominently, you will struggle to gain investment. And you were raising some questions about this. So maybe we start there. And, you know, what are you seeing right now in the kind of landscape of emerging digital health tech companies? What has been both the positive and negative impact of the AI craziness that we have in the world today on that? 

FARR: Yeah, I think the title of that was something around the great AI capital incineration [LAUGHTER] that we were about to see. But I, you know, stand by it. I do think that we’ve sort of gone really deep into this hype curve with AI, and you see these companies really just sucking up the lion’s share of venture capital investment. 

And what worries me is that these are, you know, it’s really hard, and we know this from just like decades of being in the space that tools are very hard to monetize in healthcare. Most of healthcare still today and where really the revenue is, is in, still in services. It’s still in those kind of one-to-one interactions. And what concerns me is that we are investing in a lot of these AI tools that, you know, are intended to sell into the system. But the system doesn’t yet know how to buy them and then, beyond that, how to really integrate them into the workflow.  

So where I feel more enthusiastic, and this is a little bit against the grain of what a lot of VCs [venture capitalists] think, but I actually really like care delivery businesses that are fully virtual or hybrid and really using AI as part of their stack. And I think that improves really the style of medicine that they’re delivering and makes it far more efficient. And you start to see, you know, a real improvement in the metrics, like the gross margins of these businesses beyond what you would see in really traditional kind of care delivery. And because they are the ones that own the stack, they’re the ones delivering the actual care, … 

LEE: Right. 

FARR: … they can make the decision to incorporate AI, and they can bring in the teams to do that. And I feel like in the next couple of years, we’re going to see more success with that strategy than just kind of more tools that the industry doesn’t know what to do with. 

LEE: You know, I think one thing that I think I kind of learned or I think I had an inkling of it, but it was really reinforced reading your writings, as a techie, I and I think my colleagues tend to be predisposed to looking for silver bullets. You know, technology that really just solves a problem completely.  

And I think in healthcare delivery in particular, there probably aren’t silver bullets. And what you need to do is to really look holistically at things and your emphasis on looking for those metrics that measure those end-to-end outcomes. So at the same time, if I could still focus on your blog, you do highlight companies that seem to be succeeding that way.  

Just, in preparation for this discussion, I re-read your post about Flo (opens in new tab) being the first kind of unicorn women’s health digital tech startup. And there is actually a lot of very interesting AI technology involved there. So it can happen. How do you think about that? 

FARR: Yeah, I mean, I see a lot of AI across the board. And it’s real with some of these companies, whether it’s, you know, a consumer health app like Flo that, you know, is really focused on kind of period tracking. And AI is very useful there in helping women just predict things like their optimal fertility windows. And it’s very much kind of integrated very deeply into that solution. And they have really sophisticated technology.  

And you see that now as well with the kind of craze around these longevity companies, that there is a lot of AI kind of underlying these companies, as well, especially as they’re doing, you know, a lot of health tests and pulling in new data and providing access to that data in a way that, you know, historically patients haven’t had access to.  

And then I also see it with, you know, like I spoke about with these care delivery companies. I recently spent some time with a business called Origin (opens in new tab), for instance, which is in, you know, really in kind of women’s health, MSK [musculoskeletal], and that beachhead is in pelvic floor PT [physical therapy].  

And for them, you know, it’s useful in the back office for … a lot of their PT providers are getting great education through AI. And then it’s also useful on the patient-facing side as they provide kind of more and more content for you to do exercises at home. A lot of that can be delivered through AI. So for some of these companies, you know, they look across the whole stack of what they’re providing, and they’re just seeing opportunities in so many different places for AI. And I think that’s really exciting, and it’s very, very real. And it’s really to me like where I’m seeing kind of the first set of really kind of promising AI applications. There are definitely some really compelling AI tools, as well. 

I think companies like Nuance and like Abridge and that whole category of really kind of replacing human scribes with AI, like to me, that is a … that has been so successful because it literally is the pain point. It’s the pain point. You’re solving the pain point for health systems and physicians.  

Burnout is a huge problem. Documentation is a huge problem. So, you know, to say we’ve got this kind of AI solution, everybody’s basically on board—you know, as long as it works—[LAUGHTER] from the first meeting. And then the question becomes, which one do you choose? You know, that said, you know, to me, that’s sort of a standout area. I’m not seeing that everywhere.

LEE: So there are like a bunch of things to delve into there. You know, since you mentioned the Nuance, the Dragon Copilot, and Abridge, and they are doing extremely well. But even for them, and this is another thing that you write about extensively, health systems have a hard time justifying investing in these technologies. It’s not like they’re swimming in cash. And so on that element of things, is there advice to companies that are trying to make technologies to sell into health systems? 

FARR: Yeah, I mean, I’ll give you something really practical on that just example specifically. So I spend a lot of time chatting with a lot of the health system CMIOs [chief medical informatics officers] trying to, you know, just really understand kind of their take. And they often tell me, “Look, you know, these technologies are not inexpensive, and we’ve already spent a boatload of money on REHR [regional electronic health records], which continues to be expensive. And so we just don’t have a lot of budget.” And for them, I think the question becomes, you know, who within the clinical organization would benefit most from these tools?  

There are going to be progressive physicians that will jump on these on day one and start using them and really integrating them into the workflow. And there will be a subset that just wants to do things the way they always have done things. And you don’t want to pay for seats for everybody when there’s a portion that will not be using it. So I think that’s maybe something that I would kind of share with the startup crowd is just, like, don’t try to sell to every clinician within the organization. Not everybody is going to be, you know, a technology early adopter. Work with the health systems to figure out that cohort that’s likely to jump on board first and then kind of go from there. 

LEE: So now let me get back to specifically to women’s health. I think your investing strategy has, I think it’s fair to say has had some emphasis on women’s health. And I would say for me, that has always made sense because if there’s one thing the tech industry knows how to do in any direct-to-consumer business is to turn engagement into dollars.  

And when you think about healthcare, there are very few moments in a person’s life when they have a lot of engagement with their own healthcare. But women have many. You mentioned period tracking, pregnancy, menopause. There are so many areas where you could imagine that technology could be good. At least that’s way I would think about it, but does that make any sense to you, or do you have a different thought process?  

FARR: Oh, my god, I’ve been, I’m just nodding right now because I’ve been saying the same thing for years, [LAUGHS] that like, I think the, you know, the moments of what I call naturally high engagement are most interesting to me. And I think it’s why it’s been such a struggle with some of these companies that are looking at, you know, areas like or conditions like type two diabetes.  

I mean, it’s just so hard to try to change somebody’s behavior, especially through technology. You know, we’ve not kind of proven out that these nudges are really changing anybody’s mind about, you know, their day-to-day lifestyles. Whereas, you know, in these moments, like you said, of just like naturally high engagement … like it’s, you know, women’s health, you’re right, there’s a lot of them. Like if you’re pregnant, you’re very engaged. If you’re going through menopause, you’re very engaged. And I think there are other examples like this, you know, such as oncology. You get a cancer diagnosis, you’re very engaged. 

And so, to me, that’s really kind of where I see the most interesting opportunities for technology and for digital health.  

And, you know, one example I’ll give you in women’s health, I’m not invested in this company, sadly. They are called Midi Health (opens in new tab). And they’re really everywhere in the menopause area now, like, you know, the visit volume that they are seeing is just insane. You know, this is a population that is giant. It’s, like, one in two people are women. At some point, we pretty much all go through menopause, some people earlier, some later. 

And for a lot of us, it’s a really painful, disruptive thing to experience. And we tend to experience it at a moment when we actually have spending money. So it just ticks all the boxes. And yet I think because of the bias that we see, you know, in the venture land and in the startup world, we just couldn’t get on this opportunity for a really long time. So I’ve been very excited to see companies like that really have breakout success. 

LEE: First off, you know, I think in terms of hits and misses from our book. One hit is we did think a lot about the idea that patients directly would be empowered by AI. And, you know, we had a whole chapter on this, and it was something that I think has really turned out to be true, and I think it will become more true. But one big miss is we actually didn’t think about what we were just talking about, about like who and when would this happen? And the specific focus on women, women’s health, I think is something that we missed.  

And I think one of the reasons I sought you out for this conversation is if I remember your own personal history, you essentially transitioned from journalism to venture investing at about the same time that you yourself were having a very intense period of engagement with health because of your own pregnancy. And so if you don’t mind, I’d like to get into your own experience with healthcare through pregnancy, your own experiences raising children, and how that has informed your relationship with digital health and the investing and advising that you do today. 

FARR: Yeah, it’s great question. And I actually was somebody who, you know, wrote a lot while I was kind of on maternity leave about this experience because it was such a profound one. You know, I think the reason that pregnancy is so interesting to healthcare companies and systems is because really for a lot of women, it’s their first experience with the hospital.  

Most of us have never stayed in the hospital for any period of time until that moment. Both times I had C-sections, so I was there for a good three or four days. And, you know, I think it’s a really big opportunity for these systems, even if they lose money, many of them lose money on pregnancy, which is a whole different topic, but there is an opportunity to get a whole family on board and keep them kind of loyal. And a lot of that can come through, you know, just delivering an incredible service.  

Unfortunately, I don’t think that we are delivering incredible services today to women in this country. I see so much room for improvement. You know, you see, just look at the data. You see women, you know, still dying in childbirth in this country where in many other developed nations, that’s just no longer the case.  

LEE: Yeah. And what are, in your view, the prime opportunities or needs? What do we need to do if we have a focus on technology to improve that situation?  

FARR: Yeah, I mean, I think there’s definitely an opportunity for, you know, just digital technologies and for remote patient monitoring and just other forms of monitoring. I do think we should look at what other countries have done and really consider things like, you know, three days post-discharge, somebody comes to your home, you know, whether it’s to check on you from a healthcare perspective, both, you know, physical and mental health, but then also make sure that the environment is safe for both the mother and the baby. Simple things like that, that don’t even really require any technology.  

And then there’s certainly opportunities for new forms of, you know, diagnostic tests for things like preeclampsia, postpartum preeclampsia. We could definitely use some new therapeutics in this area. Then, you know, would love to kind of also touch on the opportunity in pediatrics because there I think is an ideal use case for AI. And that’s definitely my reality now. 

LEE: Well, fact, yeah, in fact, I hope I’m not delving into too many personal issues here. But I do remember, I think with your first child, which you had during the height of the COVID pandemic, that your child actually had COVID and actually even lost sense of taste and smell for a period. And, in our book, we had sort of theorized that people would turn possibly to AI for advice to understand what was going on.  

When you look broadly at the kinds of queries that come into a search engine or into something like ChatGPT or Copilot, you do see things along those lines. But at the same time, I had always thought people wouldn’t just use a raw chat bot for these things. People would want an app, perhaps powered by AI, that would be really designed for this. And yet somehow that seems not to be as widespread.  

FARR: Yeah. And I think the word app is a great one that I’d love to, you know, maybe interrogate a little bit because I think that we have been overly reliant on apps. I’ll give you an example. So in a pediatric space, I am a user of an app called Summer Health (opens in new tab) or it’s not an app. Sorry. It’s a text messaging service. [LAUGHTER] And this is the genius. So I just pick up my phone, and I text “Summer” and a pediatrician responds within a matter of minutes. And sometimes it’s a pediatric nurse, but it’s somebody who responds to me. And they say, oh, what’s going on? And I might say, OK, well, this week we had the norovirus. So these are the symptoms. And they might say, you know, I’d love to see an image or a video. And I can text that to them.  

And if a prescription is required, then that goes to a pharmacy near me through another digital application that’s really cool called Photon Health (opens in new tab), where my script is portable, so I can move it around based on what’s open.  

So, through this, I’m getting an incredible experience that’s the most convenient … 

LEE: Wow. 

FARR: I could ever ask for, and there is no app. [LAUGHS] And you could imagine the potential for AI. You know, a company like this is probably getting so many questions about a norovirus or COVID or RSV [Respiratory Syncytial Virus], and is, I’m sure, starting to think about kind of ways in which AI could be very useful in this regard. And you don’t need a pediatrician or pediatric nurse answering every question. Perhaps there’s like sophisticated triaging to determine which questions should go to the human expert.  

But, you know, again, back to this app question, like, I think we have too many. Like, it’s just … like from a user experience perspective, just having to find the app, log into the app. Sometimes there’s just layers of authentication. Then you have to remember your password. [LAUGHTER] And it’s just, you know, it’s just too many steps. And then there’s like 50 of them for all kinds of different things. 

LEE: Yes. Well, and you have to also go to an app store, download the thing.  

FARR: Go to the app store down. It’s just too many steps.  

LEE: Yes. 

FARR: So, like, I, you know, I recognize that HIPAA exists. If there is any kind of claim involved, then, you know, you need an app because you got privacy to think about and compliance, but like, in this wave of consumerization of healthcare, there’s a lot more that’s possible. And so I’d love to see people experimenting a bit more with the form factor. And I think once we do that, we could open up a lot more interesting applications with AI, because you’ll see so much more usage day to day than you will if you require any of this kind of gatekeeping with an app. 

LEE: It’s so interesting to hear you say this because one thing that I’ve thought—and I’ve actually even expressed publicly in some venues—is one logical endpoint for AI as we understand it today is that apps become unnecessary. We might still have machines that, you know, you hold in the palm of your hand, but it’s just a machine that does what you want it to do.  

Of course, the business model implications are pretty profound. So for that particular text messaging service, do you understand what their business model is? You know, how are they sustaining themselves? 

FARR: Consumer, it’s all cash pay. It’s cash pay. You just pay a subscription. And, you know, there are certainly kind of privacy requirements, you know, related to kind of federal and state, but you could consent to be able to do something like this. And, you know, companies like this have teams of lawyers that kind of think through how do you make something like this happen. But it’s possible because of this cash pay element that really underlies that. And I think that is a growing trend.  

You know, I was literally sitting with a benefits consultant a few weeks ago, and he was saying to me, like, “I tell all my friends and family, just don’t use your insurance at all, unless it’s for like a very high price thing, like a medical procedure that’s expensive or a surgery.” He said, for everything else, I just pay cash. I pay cash for all my primary care. I pay cash for, you know, basic generic, you know, prescription medications that, you know, it’s like a few cents to manufacture.  

And I’m sort of getting there, too, where I just kind of increasingly am relying on cash pay. And I think that sort of opens up a world of opportunity for just innovation related to user experience that could really bring us to this place that you mentioned where there is no app. You literally just text or, you know, you use your voice, and you say, “I need a restaurant reservation,” and it’s done.  

LEE: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

FARR: And it’s that simple, right? And the sort of appification of everything, you know, was a important kind of evolution or moment in technology that is undeniable. But I totally agree with you that I think we might be moving past that. 

LEE: On this idea of cash, there is a little bit of a fatigue, on the other hand, with—for consumers; let me just speak as a consumer—I can’t keep track anymore of all the subscriptions I have. And so are we just trading one form of, you know, friction for another? 

FARR: Yeah, that’s a great point. But there are things that, you know, I think there are those moments where you continue to pay a subscription because it’s just something that’s chronic. You know, it’s just relevant to you. You know, pediatrics is a great example. At some point, like I won’t need a pediatrician on demand, which is what I have now, maybe when my kids are a little older, and we’re not just a cesspool of various kind of viruses at home. [LAUGHTER] But again, back to your point about, you know, the sort of moments of just, like, natural engagement, I think there’s also a moment there … there are areas or parts of our lives where, like primary care, where it’s just more longitudinal.  

And it makes sense to pay on a kind of subscription basis. Like our system is messed up because there’s just messed up incentives, right. And a subscription to me is very pure. [LAUGHTER] Like it’s you’re just saying, “I’m paying for a service that I want and need.” And then the company is saying, “OK, let me make this service as efficient and great and affordable for you as I possibly can.” And to me, that’s like a very, like refreshing trade. And I feel the same way, by the way, in my media business, which, you know, definitely has a subscription element. And it just means a lot when someone’s willing to say like this content’s worth paying for.  

LEE: Yes. 

FARR: It doesn’t work for everything, but I think it works for things that, you know, have that long-term payoff. 

LEE: Yeah, I really love that. And if I have one regret about the chapter on kind of the consumer experience from our book—I think all of this seems obvious in retrospect—you know, I wish we had tried to understand, you know, this aspect of the consumer experience, that people might actually have just online experiences that they would pay a monthly fee or an annual fee for. Because it also hits on another aspect of consumer, which is this broad—it’s actually now a national issue in healthcare—about price transparency.  

And this is another thing that I think you’ve thought about and written about, both the positives and negatives of this. I remember one blog post you made that talked about the issue of churn in digital health. And if I remember correctly, you weren’t completely certain that this was a good thing for the emerging digital health ecosystem. Can you say more about this idea of churn? 

FARR: Yeah, I mean, you know, I’ve been writing for a long time and thinking for a long time about the buyers of a lot of these kind of digital health companies, like who are the customers? And there was a long period where it was, it was really the self-insured employer, like Microsoft, being a sort of customer of these solutions because they wanted to provide a great array of health benefits for their own employees.  

And that was, you know, for a long time, like 10 or 15 years, you know, big companies that have now gone public, and it seemed like a faster timeline to be able to sell relative to health systems and, you know, health plans and other groups. And I’ve now kind of been on the forefront of saying that this channel is kind of dead. And one of the big reasons is just, you know, there’s no difference, I would say to what you see kind of in the payer lane, which is that churn is a big problem. People used to stay at jobs for 20, 30, 40 years, … 

LEE: Right. 

FARR: … and then you’d retire and have great benefits. And so it kind of made sense that your company was responsible for the healthcare that you received. And now I think the last time I looked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it’s around four years, a little bit less than four years. So what can you do in four years? [LAUGHS] 

I just read an interesting analysis on GLP-1s, these medications now that obviously are everywhere in tackling type two diabetes, and obesity is kind of the main, seems to be the hot use case. But, you know, I’m reading analysis around ROI that it’s 15, over 15 years, to see an ROI if you are, you know, a system or a plan or employer that chooses to pay for this. So how does that equate when you don’t keep an employee around for more than four?  

LEE: Yep. 

FARR: So I think it’s just left employers in a really bad place of having to make a bunch of tradeoffs and, you know, employees are demanding, we want access to these things. And they’re saying, well, our healthcare costs just keep going up and up and up. You know, we have inflation to contend with and we’re not seeing, you know, the analysis that it necessarily makes sense for us to do so. So that’s what I have, you know, been sort of harping on about with this churn issue that I’m seeing. 

LEE: Well, I have to tell you, it really, when I first started reading about this from you, it really had a profound impact on my thinking, my thought process. Because one of the things that we dream about is this idea that’s been present actually for decades in the healthcare world of this concept of real-world evidence, RWE. And that is this dream that now that we’ve digitized so much health experience, we should be able to turn all that digital data from people’s health experiences into new medical knowledge.  

But the issue of churn that I think that I would credit you introducing me to calls that into question because you’re right. Over a four-year period, you don’t get the longitudinal view of a person’s health that gives you the ability to get those medical insights. And so something needs to change there. But it’s very much tied to what consumers want to do. Consumers move around; they change jobs.  

FARR: Yes.  

LEE: If it’s cash-based, they’ll be shopping based on all sorts of things. And so it … 

FARR: And so the natural end of all this, it’s two words: single payer. [LAUGHS] But we don’t want to go there as a country. So, you know, it sort of left us in this kind of murky middle. And I think a lot about, kind of, what kind of system we’ll end up having. What I don’t think is possible is that this current one is sustainable.  

LEE: You know, I do think in terms of the payer of CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services], Medicare and Medicaid services, the amount of influence that they exert on health spending in the US has been increasing steadily year by year. And in a sense, you could sort of squint and view that as a slow drift towards some element of single payer. But it’s definitely not so intentional or organized right now.  

While we’re talking about these sorts of trends, of course, another big trend is the graying of America. And we’re far from alone, China, and much of the Orient, Europe, UK, people are getting older. And from the consumer-patient perspective, this brings up the challenge, I think, that many people have in caring for elderly loved ones.  

And this seems to me, like women’s health, to be another area where if I were starting a new digital health company, I would think very seriously about that space because that’s another space where there can be extreme intensity of engagement with the healthcare system. Do you as both a human being and consumer but also as an investor, do you think about that space at all? 

FARR: Oh, yes, all the time. And I do think there’s incredible opportunity here.  

And it’s probably because of the same kind of biases that exist that, you know, didn’t allow us to see the menopause opportunity, I think we’re just not seeing this as being as big as it is. And like you said, it’s not just an American problem. It’s being felt across the world.  

And I do think that there are some, you know, I’ve seen some really interesting stuff lately. Was recently spending some time with a company called Cherish Health (opens in new tab) out of Boston, and they’re using AI and radar-based sensing technologies to just be able to stick a device and like really anywhere in the person’s home. And it just like passively is able to detect falls and also kind of monitor kind of basic health metrics. And because it’s radar, it can operate through walls. So even if you’re in the bathroom, it still works, which has been a big problem with a lot of these devices in the past.  

And then, you have to have really advanced kind of AI and, you know, this sort of technology to be able to glean whether it’s a true fall or, you know, that’s really, you need help or it’s, you know, just the person sitting down on the floor to play with their grandchild. So things like this are, they’re still early, but I think really exciting. And we’re going to see a lot more of that in addition to, you know, some really interesting companies that are trying to think more about sort of social needs that are not healthcare needs, but you know, this, this population needs care, like outside of just, you know, medical treatment. They oftentimes may be experiencing homelessness, they might experience food insecurity, there might be a lack of just caregivers in their life. And so, you know, there are definitely some really interesting businesses there, as well.  

And then kind of a, you know, another trend that I think we’ll see a lot more is that, you know, countries are freaking out about the lack of babies being born, which you need to be able to … you know, I recognize climate change is a huge issue, but you also need babies to be born to support this aging population. So I think we’re going to see, you know, a lot more interest from these administrations around, you know, both like child tax credits and various policies to support parents but then also IVF [in vitro fertilization] and innovation around technology in the fertility space.  

LEE: All right. So we’re starting to run towards the end of our time together. So I’d like to get into maybe a couple more provocative or, you know, kinds of questions. So first, and there’s one that’s a little bit dark and another that’s much lighter. So let me start with the darker one so we can have a chance to end on a lighter note. I think one of the most moving pieces I’ve read from you recently was the open letter to your kids about the assassination of Brian Thompson (opens in new tab), who’s a senior executive of UnitedHealth Group. And so I wonder if you’re willing to share, first off, what you wrote there and then why you felt it was important to do that. 

FARR: Yeah. So, you know, I thought about just not saying anything. That was my original intention because it was just, you know, that moment that it happened, it was just so hot button. And a lot of people have opinions, and Twitter was honestly a scary place, just with the things that people were saying about this individual, who, you know, I think just like had a family and friends and a lot of my network knew him and felt really personally impacted by this. And I, you know, it was just a really sad moment, I think, for a lot of reasons.  

And then I just kind of sat down one evening and I wrote this letter to my kids that basically tried to put a lot of this in context. Like what … why are people feeling this way about our healthcare system? You know, why was all this sort of vitriol being really focused on this one individual? And then, you know, I think one of the things I sort of argued in this letter was that there’s lots of ways to approach innovation in the space. You can do it from the outside in, or you can do it from the inside out.  

And I’ll tell you that a lot of like, I got a lot of emails that week from people who were working at health plans, like UnitedHealth employees, some of them in their 20s, you know, they were recent kind of grads who’d gone to work at this company. And they said, you know, I felt like I couldn’t tell my friends, kind of, where I worked that week. And I emailed back and said, “Look, you’re learning healthcare. You are in an incredible position right now. Like whether you choose to stay your current company or you choose to leave, like you, you understand like the guts and the bowels of healthcare because you’re working at the largest healthcare company in the world. So you’re in an enviable position. And I think you are going to be able to effect change, like, more so than anyone else.” And that was part of what I wrote in this letter, that, you know, we should all agree that the system is broken, and we could do better. Nothing about what happened was OK. And also, like, let’s admire our peers and colleagues that are going into the trenches to learn because I genuinely believe those are the people that, you know, have the knowledge and the contacts and the network to be able to really kind of get change moving along, such desperately needed change. 

LEE: All right. So now one thing I’ve been asking every guest is about the origin story with respect to your first encounter with generative AI. How did that happen, and what were your first sort of experiences like? You know, what emotionally, intellectually, what went through your mind? 

FARR: So probably my first experience was I was really struggling with the title for my book. And I told ChatGPT what my book was about and what I wanted the title to evoke and asked it for recommendations. And then, I thought the first, like, 20 were actually pretty good. And I was able to say, can you make it a bit more witty? Can you make it more funny? And it spat back out some quite decent titles. And then what was interesting is that it just got worse and worse, like, over time and just ended up, like, deeply cheesy. [LAUGHTER] 

And so it sort of both like made me think that this could be a really useful prompt for just brainstorming. But then either it does seem to be some weird thing with AI where, like the more you push it on the same question, it just, like, it doesn’t … it seems to have sparked the most creativity in the first few tries, and then it just gets worse. And maybe you know more about this than I would. You certainly know more about this than I do. But that’s been my kind of general experience of it thus far. 

LEE: Mm-hmm. But would you say you were more skeptical or awe-inspired? What were the emotions at that moment? 

FARR: Um, you know, it was better than, like, a lot of my ideas. [LAUGHTER] So I definitely felt like it was from that perspective very impressive. But then, you know, it seemed to have the same human, like I said, we all kind of run out of ideas at some point and, you know, it turns out, so do the machines.  

So that was interesting in and of itself. And I ended up picking, I think a title that was like sort of, you know, inspired by the AI suggestions, but was definitely had its own twist that was my own. 

LEE: Well, Chrissy, I’ve never known you as someone who runs out of ideas, but this has been just great. As always, I always learn a lot when I have a chance to interact with you or read your writings. And so, thank you again for joining. Just really, really appreciate it. 

FARR: Of course, and next time I want to have you on my podcast because I have a million questions for you, too.   

LEE: Sure, anytime. 

FARR: Amazing. OK, I’ll hold you to that. Thanks so much for having me on. 

LEE: I’ve always been impressed not only with Chrissy’s breadth and depth of experience with the emerging tech trends that affect the health industry, but she’s also a connector to key decision-makers in nearly every sector of healthcare. This experience, plus her communication abilities, make it no surprise that she’s sought out for help in a range of go-to-market, investor relations, social media, content development, and communications issues. 

Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise, but one thing I learned from our conversation is that the business of direct-to-consumer health is still emerging. It’s far from mature. And you can see that Chrissy and her venture-investing colleagues are still trying to figure out what works. Her discussion, for example, on cash-only health delivery and the idea that consumers might not want another app on their phones were indicative of that.  

Another takeaway is that some areas, such as pre- and postnatal care, menopause, elder care, and other types of what the health industry might call subacute care are potentially areas where not only AI might find the most impact but also where there’s sufficient engagement by consumers to make it possible to sustain the business. 

When Carey, Zak, and I started writing our book, one of the things that we started off with was based on a story that Zak had written concerning his 90-year-old mother. And of course, as I had said in an earlier episode of this podcast, that was something that really touched me because I was having a similar struggle with my father, who at the time was 89 years old. 

One of the things that was so difficult about caring for my father is that he was living in Los Angeles, and I was living up in the Pacific Northwest. And my two sisters also lived far away from Los Angeles, being in Pittsburgh and in Phoenix.  

And so as the three of us, my two sisters and I, tried to navigate a fairly complex healthcare system involving a primary care physician for my father plus two specialists, I have to say over a long period of illness, a lot of things happen, including the fraying of relationships between three siblings. What was so powerful for us, and this is where this idea of patient empowerment comes in, is when we could give all of the data, all of the reports from the specialist, from the primary care physician, other information, give it to GPT-4 and then just ask the question, “We’re about to have a 15-minute phone call with one of the specialists. What are the most important two or three things we should ask about?” Doing that just brings down the temperature, eliminates a potential source of conflict between siblings who are all just wanting to take care of their father. 

And so as we think about the potential of AI in medicine, this concept of patient empowerment, while we’ve learned in this episode, is still emerging, I think in the long run could be the most important long-term impact of this new age of AI. 

I’d like to say thank you again to Dave and Chrissy for sharing their stories and insights. And to our listeners, thank you for joining us. We have some really great conversations planned for the coming episodes, including a discussion on regulations, norms, and ethics developing around AI and health. We hope you’ll continue to tune in.  

Until next time.