NEJM AI Grand Rounds

In this episode, vanguard geneticist Dr. George Church recounts his storied career from his early fascination with computers and science to his pioneering work in genomics and synthetic biology. Dr. Church developed innovative DNA sequencing methods that enabled the first sequencing of the human genome. He was also instrumental in developing CRISPR gene editing technology. Dr. Church discusses his controversial ideas around resurrecting wooly mammoths and using genome sequencing in dating apps to prevent genetic diseases. He also provides insights into founding genomics companies and the role of AI in advancing biotechnology. As a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and the founder of multiple genomics companies, Dr. Church emphasizes the potential for synthetic biology and genetics to transform medicine and society.
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In this episode, we’re joined by business magnate and investor Mark Cuban. Cuban describes his journey from humble beginnings as a self-taught programmer to becoming a successful serial entrepreneur and owner of an NBA team. Cuban shares the founding story of his pharmacy benefits company, Cost Plus Drugs, and his vision for reimagining the reimbursement system for care. He also articulates why he believes AI will be more transformative than prior technology shifts such as mobile and the internet and unpacks the potential of AI in addressing previously intractable problems in healthcare. Cuban is a self-made billionaire, bestselling author, star of Shark Tank, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks.
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In this episode, pioneering informatician Dr. Atul Butte guides listeners through his storied career, from his early days as a pediatric endocrinologist and informatician in Boston to his trailblazing work on the West Coast. Dr. Butte describes his trailblazing efforts to both harness large-scale public biomedical data and share patient data across the entire UC Health System. Dr. Butte also discusses his entrepreneurial journey, including the genesis and vision behind companies like NuMedii. Dr. Butte is the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Distinguished Professor at UCSF and the Chief Data Scientist of the UC Health System.
 
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In this thought-provoking episode, Dr. Ziad Obermeyer delves into the complex issues of bias, safety, and generalizability of medical AI. Dr. Obermeyer emphasizes the importance of machine learning researchers’ task formulation, an often-overlooked yet significant determinant of bias in AI algorithms. Highlighting the dual impact of machine learning, he compares two of his works that demonstrate how AI can either exacerbate or help mitigate health care disparities. Lastly, he discusses the significant challenges encountered in the development of AI models due to siloed and inaccessible data, sharing his own experiences and solutions in tackling this issue. Dr. Obermeyer is the Blue Cross of California Distinguished Professor at the Berkeley School of Public Health, Co-Founder of Nightingale Open Science, and Co-Founder of Dandelion Health.
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Dr. Marzyeh Ghassemi has been at the forefront of medical machine learning for several years. In this episode, she describes her group’s work and her perspectives on developing and applying machine learning to understand and improve health in ways that are robust, private, and fair. Dr. Ghassemi is an Assistant Professor at MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Institute for Medical Engineering & Science.
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Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have proven highly capable of a broad array of natural language tasks including summarizing text, generating prose, and answering questions. This episode’s two guests, Dr. Alan Karthikesalingam and Vivek Natarajan of Google, describe their team’s recent efforts to adapt and evaluate LLMs for clinical applications. Alan and Vivek took very different paths to becoming leading medical AI researchers and in this episode they also share their educational journeys and perspectives on where the field is headed. Alan is a Senior Staff Clinician Scientist and Research Lead at Google Health and Vivek is a Research Scientist at Google Health AI.
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Dr. Michael Abramoff is a renowned ophthalmologist and medical AI pioneer. In this episode, we explore his groundbreaking work that led to the first FDA-authorized device that does not require a physician, IDx-DR, which detects more than mild diabetic retinopathy from digital images of the eye. Dr. Abramoff also reflects on the challenges of commercialization, AI reimbursement, and the ethical imperatives for AI in health care centered around patient benefit. Dr. Abramoff is the Robert C. Watzke Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Iowa and Founder & Executive Chairman of Digital Diagnostics, an autonomous AI diagnostics company that developed IDx-DR.
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Dr. Peter Lee has shaped computer science from academia, government, and industry. He has chaired a major computer science department, built a new technology office at DARPA, and now serves as Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, where he leads Microsoft Research and its nine worldwide laboratories. In this episode, Peter reveals Microsoft’s interest in health care and the origins of the OpenAI and Microsoft partnership, and he speculates on how large language models like ChatGPT will transform medicine.
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Dr. Lily Peng has driven major medical AI efforts along the long and arduous path from ideation to deployment. From publishing a landmark study in 2016 presenting an AI model to detect diabetic retinopathy in retinal fundus photographs to evaluating deep learning systems in India and Thailand, she has a unique and wide-ranging perspective on both model development and real-world validation. She continues to lead medical AI efforts as a physician-scientist and the Director of Product Management at Verily.
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Dr. Pranav Rajpurkar has been at the forefront of medical AI for his entire career. As a graduate student in computer science at Stanford, he created some of the first AI models for radiology and created a suite of datasets and benchmarks that have been widely used by researchers across the world. Now, as a faculty member at Harvard, his group has continued to push the frontier of medical AI across many different specialties including radiology, pathology, and cardiology.
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