| I flew to San Francisco yesterday to take part in Rock Health’s annual summit. |
| It’s been about half a year since I last visited, so the event served as a good gut check of where AI in healthcare is headed. Back in March, optimism was high. To a big degree, folks in the industry are still optimistic, but there seems to be a bigger emphasis on proving AI will live up to the hype. |
| Here were a few things that surprised me, from conversations both onstage and off. |
| Questions about AI safety aren’t new: I moderated a discussion about the realities of AI adoption within healthcare. I’d come into it thinking about the recent doomsday predictions and wondering if those would slow the
pace of the technology’s use. But when I asked the panelists, I got the sense that the question wasn’t a fresh one. |
| "I think we need to balance the conversation a little bit better, and I think we need to start celebrating the good that is happening through these programs and the people who otherwise maybe wouldn't live or be able to provide care for their kids if we didn't have these technologies," b.well Connected Health CEO Kristen Valdes said. |
| Regulation of AI is expected: Attendees seemed to think that after the midterm elections, more guardrails could be put in place around the use of AI. |
| New-to-me terms: Agents (for booking healthcare appointments and accessing patient portals) and abundance (the idea that the technology will enable much more access to primary care, for example). |
| IPO hopes? No chance: After Oura pulled its public offering, I checked to see if any health tech startups might brave the waters. There weren’t a lot of optimistic answers. Before, it seemed like the benchmark to going public was getting to profitability. The past few years’ rise of generative AI
shifted that goalpost again, and the sense I got was companies would rather figure out their AI strategies while private. |
| The question I still have: Some onstage conversations left me thinking that an "inflection point" in healthcare is coming within the next year. When will that hit, and what force — consumers, government, etc. — will be driving it? |
| The Endpoints team has two more fall trips ahead of us (See you soon, New York and Las Vegas!). If you see us around, or want to meet up, message me. |
| - Lydia |
