In this episode, Steven Labkoff and Leon Rozenblit explore the legal, regulatory, and risk-management challenges introduced by AI with two top experts in the field: Kathy Roe, Principal at Health Law Consultancy, and Kenny White, Director of the Managed Care Industry Group at Alliant Insurance Services.
Together, they unpack how AI intersects with medical malpractice, product liability, HIPAA privacy, de-identification, intellectual property, contractual risk, and insurance coverage. Kathy and Kenny explain why AI is not yet the standard of care — but why clinicians and health systems must develop AI literacy now as the legal landscape evolves.
A must-listen episode for healthcare leaders navigating the risks and realities of AI adoption.
In our second Reflections episode, Steve Labkoff and Leon Rozenblit synthesize the most meaningful insights from guests across Episodes 9–15. Drawing on conversations with Orr Inbar, Martin Leach, Ing Ho, Yuri Quintana, and patient advocate E-Patient Dave, this episode highlights the themes shaping practical AI adoption in today’s healthcare landscape.
Key topics include the inflection point AI has created across clinical care, research, and patient engagement; the need for stronger data stewardship to support trustworthy automation; and the emerging promise of AI-driven clinical trial optimization and simulation. We also explore how patients are engaging with AI tools independently, raising new questions about literacy, safety, and empowerment.
Additional themes include the cultural alignment required for tools like ambient listening and chart summarization to succeed and what it will take for AI to avoid the missteps of past health-IT transitions.
The episode closes with a preview of upcoming guests discussing AI in law, payer innovation, psychiatric diagnostics, and the future of scientific publishing.
We just released one of the most intellectually energizing conversations we’ve had on Practical AI in Healthcare. Our guest this week is Dr. Adam Rodman, physician, informatician, historian of medicine, and one of the most original thinkers at the intersection of AI and clinical reasoning.
Adam brings a rare perspective to the field: before becoming an AI researcher, he spent years studying how humans make medical decisions — how clinicians reason, where cognition breaks down, and how technology reshapes the way we conceptualize disease. His reflections on the evolution from QMR and INTERNIST-1 to today’s large language models are a must-hear.
In this episode, we explore:
• Why LLMs challenge 50 years of clinical decision support assumptions
• New collaboration models for doctors, patients, and AI — not just “human in the loop,” but truly redesigned workflows
• What’s holding back clinical AI adoption (spoiler: it’s not accuracy)
• The regulatory gap—and why the FDA’s old device mindset won’t work for generative models
• How urgent-care AI companies are early signals of a broader shift
Adam also discusses what the next 3–5 years may actually look like — and why change will be slow…until the moment it becomes very fast.
Listen here and join the conversation on the future of practical, safe, and human-centered AI in healthcare.
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#HealthcareAI, #ClinicalAI #MedicalInformatics #ClinicalDecisionSupport #AIinMedicine #DigitalHealth #HealthTech #FutureOfHealthcare #GenerativeAI #AIGovernance #DiagnosticExcellence #PatientCareInnovation #HealthcareTransformation #AIThoughtLeadership #PracticalAI
Practical AI in Healthcare just released one of our most eye-opening conversations yet, featuring Orr Inbar, CEO & Co-Founder of QuantHealth.
QuantHealth is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in clinical development with AI-driven clinical trial simulation. Orr walked us through how modern deep learning, massive biological knowledge graphs, and patient-level real-world data can now simulate clinical trials with 80–90% accuracy — across dozens of indications, modalities, and trial phases.
In our conversation, we cover:
• How QuantHealth models patient-drug interactions at massive scale
• Why trial design is still the most critical (and fixable) failure point in drug development
• How simulation is becoming the new starting point for protocols
• What AI-first trial design could mean for speed, cost, and reducing avoidable trial failures
• Where the field is headed in the next 5–10 years — including the provocative question of how far simulation can replace human trials
Orr also discusses the acceleration of biological data, the maturity of real-world data, and transformer-based AI — the perfect storm that made this moment possible.
This is one of the best deep dives yet into the practical future of drug development.
In the conclusion of our two-part conversation with Dr. Yin Ho, author of Rushing Headlong: Health IT’s Legacy and the Road to Responsible AI, we explore how healthcare can avoid repeating its digital past. Dr. Ho and hosts Dr. Steven Labkoff and Dr. Leon Rozenblit dive into small language models, decision support vs. decision control, the pitfalls of ambient scribing, and why “rage-building” the next generation of EHRs might be the most responsible act of all.
The newest episode of Practical AI in Healthcare features Dr. Yin Ho—physician, entrepreneur, and author of Rushing Headlong: Health IT's Legacy and the Road to Responsible AI.
In Part 1 of our two-part conversation, Dr. Ho joins Dr. Steven Labkoff and Dr. Leon Rozenblit to unpack 25 years of digital health transformation—from the dawn of electronic medical records to the market and policy forces that shaped today’s health IT landscape.
Together, we explore how well-intentioned decisions created a fragmented system that prioritizes billing over care—and why understanding that history is essential to building a responsible AI future.
#HealthcareAI #DigitalHealth #HealthIT #PracticalAIinHealthcare #Podcast
Dr. Yuri Quintana, Director of the Division of Clinical Informatics at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, joins us this week to discuss the DCI Network’s mission: turning AI in healthcare from theory into practice.
The conversation traces DCI’s evolution as a multi-stakeholder “action tank” focused on collaboration, transparency, and patient safety. Quintana recounts the success of the Signal Through the Noise conference and the insights that emerged—chief among them that “mundane AI” (like triage, scheduling, and documentation tools) is quietly creating real value.
The episode also explores topics like AI literacy, governance, transparency (“AI nutrition (model) labels”), and post-market surveillance for clinical AI—ending with a call to action: keeping healthcare innovation grounded in what truly matters to patients.
In this episode of Practical AI in Healthcare, Dr. Steven Labkoff and Dr. Leon Rozenblit speak with ePatient Dave DeBronkart, a globally recognized advocate for patient empowerment.
Dave shares his journey from a life-threatening kidney cancer diagnosis in 2007 to becoming one of the earliest champions of open data, patient access to medical records, and of late, patient use of AI tools to help empower them along their medical journey.
He recounts how the ability to access information, share data, and join online patient communities helped save his life—and how those lessons now translate into how patients use generative AI. Dave highlights stories where AI enabled patients to identify rare diagnoses, manage health conditions, and even prepare for clinical visits.
The discussion examines how AI literacy and trust can empower patients, the ethical boundaries of sharing health data, and the evolution of patient–clinician partnerships in the era of AI.
This week’s episode of Practical AI in Healthcare dives into AI, truth, and the future of data in the government with Dr. Martin Leach, Chief Data Officer at Black Canyon Consulting.
Dr. Martin Leach, PhD, is a data, science, and technology leader with a career spanning some of the most innovative organizations in life sciences and academia. A self-described “data geek,” Martin began his career as a molecular neuropharmacologist before shifting from the bench to data-driven discovery. Over the past two decades, he has held senior roles at Merck, Biogen, Alexion, and AstraZeneca, and was the inaugural Chief Information Officer at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Today, Martin serves as Chief Data Officer at Black Canyon Consulting, where he works these organizations on projects that unite bioinformatics, AI, and data federation — from building semantic knowledge graphs to creating “gold-standard” datasets for model validation. His work bridges the worlds of science, computation, and policy, shaping how government and industry can responsibly harness AI to advance biomedical research and healthcare delivery.
From building gold-standard datasets to exploring quantum AI, Martin shares how these projects are shaping the next generation of healthcare data science.
In this week's episode, Leon and Steve unpack and digest the various pearls provided by our first 7 podcasts. From frameworks to consider concerning AI in the business and healthcare setting to AI Literacy, we highlight the various lessons learned as we move into our third month of the Podcast.
This episode of Practical AI in Healthcare features Brendan Arbuckle, CIO of The Jackson Laboratory (JAX). Brendan shares how a world-leading genetics institute is deploying AI to advance research, streamline operations, and raise AI literacy across its organization. From ethical sandboxes to research breakthroughs and “everyday AI” that saves clinicians time, he offers a refreshingly grounded take on what responsible AI looks like in practice.
Listen now to learn how JAX balances innovation with rigor and why Brendan believes AI is “bigger than IT—it’s a new language of discovery.”
Season 1, Episode 6 welcomes John Glaser—executive in residence at Harvard Medical School, former SVP at Cerner, past CEO of Siemens Health Services, and a pioneer in healthcare IT. Join hosts Dr. Steve Labkoff and Dr. Leon Rozenblit as they explore Glaser’s unique perspective on the trajectory of AI in healthcare, drawing lessons from over 40 years of industry transformation. Find out:
Why every breakthrough, from the mainframe to mobile, set the stage for today’s AI revolution.
How practical deployments—like specialized AI for prior authorizations—deliver true value, while hype often fills the void left by a lack of hands-on experience.
The importance of focusing on real-world ROI, efficiency, and smart clinical capacity management, with less emphasis on “sexy” use cases and more on what genuinely reshapes healthcare for the better.
Essential insights on domain specificity: why expert models outperform generic AI in high-stakes environments, and how learning from implementation drives success.
Why building successful AI adoption means mitigating risks, fostering literacy—not just technical training—and evolving governance to match pace with technology.
Glaser’s message is clear: “This is a remarkable time. This is remarkable technology. Extraordinarily powerful. ... But the way you deal with this kind of stuff is one step at a time.” Join the conversation and stay practical about what’s next in healthcare AI.
Yair Saperstein, MD, MPH, is CEO and Co-Founder of Avo, the AI engine used by healthcare organizations to improve care and operational outcomes in a way clinicians love. He is a hospitalist at Mount Sinai Hospital. Dr. Saperstein graduated from Albert Einstein College of Medicine with distinction in research in global health and from SUNY Downstate with a Master's in Public Health in hospital policy and management.
Avo is the OS for healthcare AI applications, providing a single point of entry for health systems to deploy any AI-powered workflow. Their initial suite of applications focuses on clinical decision support, chart review, scribing, and patient discharges.
Yair will discuss the challenges faced by clinicians and how Avo is changing some of the most perplexing issues in the day-to-day practice of medicine.
This week, Leon Rozenblit and I digest the wonderful wisdom we've heard over the first two months of the podcast. We try to distill all the various pearls that were dropped by our guest speakers.
If you missed the first series of episodes, this will help you both catch up and speed through the learnings that came out of these discussions.
Scott Snyder is many things: a part-time professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, an author on AI, and the Chief Digital Officer of Eversana. In this episode we will explore Scott's various pursuits, his new book, and his view on where AI an Healthcare are intersecting.
One of the most underserved communities in the world of AI is that of clinicians. But Dr. Dereck Paul of Glass Health is trying to change that. Being a clinician himself, he's bringing a new approach to something that's the bane of a clinician's existence - creating and documenting interactions with patients. Listen in to this young entrepreneur as he unpacks his vision for clinical medicine and how Glass Health is trying to change things for clinicians for the better.
This week we hear from someone in the thick of the AI game, John Apathy from XponenL.AI. John's the Chief Solution's Officer for this recently acquired AI firm that focuses in on the pharmaceutical R&D space. John explains his perspectives as well as some of the work being done by his firm for some of their largest customers.
When OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, it marked a turning point in the global conversation around artificial intelligence. Virtually overnight, industries across the board began exploring how Generative AI could transform the way we work, think, and solve problems. Healthcare was no exception. From improving clinical workflows and accelerating research, to empowering patients and supporting care decisions, the entire ecosystem began to imagine a future radically reshaped by AI.
Fast forward to today: the buzz hasn't faded—but the outcomes are still catching up.
Despite a flood of announcements, pilot programs, and innovation initiatives, truly impactful AI implementations in healthcare remain surprisingly rare. The promise was huge. The follow-through? Often underwhelming. For a sector where lives are at stake and progress must be both ethical and measurable, the gap between hype and real-world utility is especially stark.
That’s why we launched Practical AI in Healthcare.
This podcast is dedicated to surfacing the ideas, projects, and tools that are actually working—today. Not speculative futures or marketing sizzle, but grounded, proven use cases of AI making meaningful change across the healthcare landscape.
Each episode features candid conversations with the people driving that change: healthcare leaders, technologists, clinicians, researchers, entrepreneurs, and authors of the latest books and peer-reviewed articles. Together, we explore how they're applying AI to solve real problems—in clinical care, clinical trials, diagnostics, operations, public health, and beyond. We dig into the details: What challenge are they addressing? What did implementation really take? What resistance did they face—and how did they overcome it? Most importantly, what impact are they seeing?
In this pilot episode, co-hosts Dr. Steven Labkoff and Dr. Leon Rozinblit introduce the vision behind the podcast and lay the groundwork for future conversations. They discuss why now is the right moment for this kind of show, what defines a “practical” AI solution in healthcare, and how listeners—regardless of their role in the industry—can use these insights to inform their own work.
New episodes drop every other week. If you're tired of inflated promises and looking instead for signal in the noise—join us.