← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
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- [00:02]
A
This is where healthcare leadership comes together. Becker's 16th annual meeting brings more than 3,500 hospital and health system executives and nearly 800 speakers to Chicago, April 13th through the 16th. This year's event includes keynote conversations with Dallas Cowboys legend Troy Aikman and former President George W. Bush. For the agenda and event details, visit Beckershospitalreview.com and click on the Events tab in the upper right. We're looking forward to hosting you in Chicago.
- [00:32]
B
This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by a brilliant physician leader. We're joined today by Dr. Alvin Lu. He is the endowed professor and inaugural Director of The James Gillis Jr. Maryland Heather Gill's Artificial Intelligence Innovation center at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Dr. Lewis had this remarkable career. He's a gifted retinal vitro retinal surgeon himself. Dr. Wu, can you take a moment? You're also an investor, PTX Capital. Take a moment and introduce yourself. Then we're going to talk about what you're doing with the AI Innovation center and a lot more.
- [01:12]
C
Dr. Lu hi Scott, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here today. As you mentioned, I'm a retinal surgeon by training, so I spent the majority of my adult life on the east coast and I attended medical school at Columbia University in New York and my ophthalmology residency training and retina surgery training, both at Johns Hopkins. Afterwards, I stayed behind at Johns Hopkins University as a faculty member. Right now, outside of my clinical practice, my entire focus at Johns Hopkins is in artificial intelligence. In terms of AI, I wear two different hats. On the School of Medicine side, I am the director of the Gil's AI Innovation center, which is the first endowed AI research center at the School of Medicine. On the health system side, I have been involved in the implementation and scaling of AI tools for both clinical and operational purposes, such as diabetic retinopathy screening in the primary care setting and revenue cycle management. I also serve on the AI Oversight team, which is a leadership team with purview over all things AI related on the health system level.
- [02:28]
B
Amazing. Talk a bit about the Innovation center, the AI Intelligence center, and what you're most excited about this year where your biggest focus is.
- [02:37]
C
There are several waves of AI that I'm watching closely. Maybe to take a step back, I'd like to provide a little bit more context. The first two waves of AI adoption and implementation in healthcare have been in MD and scribing and revenue cycle management, and I think the next up and coming wave of adoption is in voice AI. There's currently a crop of AI native voice AI companies that are capable of handling inbound calls and outbound calls and appointment scheduling. They tend to be omnichannel capable of both voice and text. I find these AI native voice companies very exciting because we could really reimagine the entire patient front door experience. And these AI companies are inherently disruptive and could directly challenge incumbents whose tech stack is not AI native.
- [03:36]
B
Fascinating. And where do you see some of that evolving? Because obviously we're all watching in the market. Some of the AI companies crush some of the software companies. At least over the short term. The last couple weeks big software companies have taken in the chin to the concerns that AI will do a lot of what they do. What's that evolution that you're watching? What do you see there?
- [03:58]
C
That's a really interesting question. I think as we, as we all know, there's been a sell off in traditional SaaS companies in the past couple of months. And I think the underlying sell off is because of two reasons. Number one, investors are worried that Frontier AI labs, the ones that make foundation AI models, are moving into the application space. And second, investors are worried that the traditional SaaS pricing model no longer holds meaning in traditional SaaS model. SaaS company will charge a platform or subscription fee and then they get to charge per human seat for additional revenue. I agree that these things are under threat, but at the same time I don't think we will be competing the profit margins down to zero. I am seeing an emergence of AI application companies and these are not the hyperscalers, these are not the foundation AI models makers. Instead they are typically companies led by leaders with deep domain expertise. They understand very specific problems in healthcare and then builds amazing AI native products on top of these quickly advancing large language models to solve very specific models to solve very specific problems with tangible roi. So I'm not surprised that these AI native companies are taking the market by storm. At the same time, just because the traditional SaaS model will likely need to change doesn't mean these traditional SaaS companies are going to go away. I think they really have two options. Either they have to innovate very rapidly internally to bring up, you know, to really advance their own AI capabilities or they will be forced to buy out these AI native companies. Regardless, I do think that it's a bit of a overcorrection and when it comes to the prices of these publicly traded SaaS company, but at the same time we will see some Divergence in terms of who's going to win and who's going to lose in the next 12 to 18 months.
- [06:20]
B
Thank you so much. And when you look at this coming year, what are some of the trends that you're watching most closely, both as a leader of an innovation AI center and also as a physician leader?
- [06:33]
C
I think there are three things that I will be keeping track of. Number one is the continue progress and traction of healthcare AI companies on the app level. I think we'll see more and more of these healthcare app level companies with very convincing products. The marketplace is going to get more and more crowded. So at the end of the day, I do think that AI is getting commoditized. The ability to build AI products is going to become a commodity. The name of the game. It's really implementation, implementation, implementation. The second trend that I'm quite excited about is a field called called oculomics. So alkalomics is the field of science. The studies the correlation between ophthalmic biomarkers, oftentimes, retinal biomarkers and systemic health states. In 2026, by combining AI and retinal images, we could actually predict three buckets of diseases. Cardiovascular disease, dementia and kidney disease. There are already commercial entities with scientifically validated products that could predict these buckets of disease. If we could deploy these retinal image and AI based oculomic screening programs in the community, we could significantly widen the patient funnel, improve patient access, identify patients at risk, and really initiate time intervention and improve health outcomes on a population level. However, this would really require buy in from different stakeholders, design of new patient pathways and innovative business models. The third trend that I will be watching in 2026 is the idea of artificial medical general intelligence. So the definition of artificial medical general intelligence is still being debated, but I think a reasonable definition is an AI system that is better than 75% of physicians across all medical specialties. And in terms of medical knowledge and clinical decision making, I think from a technology perspective, we really are quite close to achieving this benchmark. How fast we can productize this ability is a separate issue. But I have no doubt we'll get there eventually. As you can imagine, once we achieve artificial medical general intelligence, medicine as we know it will be completely transformed and so will the business model of medicine.
- [09:14]
B
Dr. Liu, let me ask you this question. With the evolution in artificial intelligence, the resources at physicians hands that accessible, how will that change or should it change medical education? I know it's a very challenging question. Any thoughts there on how this should impact how we educate our physicians.
- [09:36]
C
I'll answer that in two different ways. One aspect is how we should think about AI in the education of physicians. And the second question is how should we educate current or evolving healthcare executives? And I'll start with the first one. In my experience, in my observation, AI in medical education, especially for physicians, is really lagging behind. And I don't think it's primarily a healthcare medicine specific phenomenon. It's just that AI is advancing so fast. I think all aspects of society is playing catch up. I will say if I were to design the next generation of medical education for physician, which is start with the premise that AI is not a fad, AI is here to stay and whether we like it or not, AI will be very tightly integrated to the daily operations of the provision of care and what it means to be a doctor. So I think starting with that underlying premise is an important thing for us to design the next generation of education for physicians. On the healthcare executive side, I will say that it is clear that AI can improve the efficiency of many aspects of healthcare with measurable, concrete ROIs. That's why it's also equally important for healthcare executives and to be more familiar with AI specifically which problems could and should be solved by AI. And frankly speaking, a lot of problems cannot and should not be solved by AI. So just first and foremost, it is important for healthcare executives to understand what AI could and should do. And second, most current AI solutions are human centric, meaning we try to apply AI at various points of the workflows which are designed by and for humans. Ultimately, the efficiency gains achieved this way will be limited and incremental. Instead, I encourage evolving healthcare executives to reimagine and redesign workflows such that these new workflows are AI centric, meaning we should design workflows to maximize the efficiency and impact of healthcare systems first and then insert humans wherever it makes sense. I believe that to bring transformation changes to healthcare, AI centric workflows will be critical.
- [12:14]
B
Thank you. Dr. Lu, let me ask you this question. You've had this magnificent professional career at the intersection of innovation, retinal surgery and just fascinating. Talk for a second about what advice would you give physicians that want to keep thriving, that want to have impactful careers and want to keep it exciting and interesting. What advice do you give to people?
- [12:42]
C
I think AI is just another technology. If you look at the history of medicine, it's been really tightly intertwined with the evolution of technology as well. And over time, especially over the past 50 years or so, what it means to be a physician and what it means to practice medicine really has changed a lot. I don't think fundamentally that's a new thing when it comes to AI, except that the rate of change will only accelerate. I would encourage new physicians to really think about what it means to be a doctor. Broadly speaking, it typically involves diagnosing a disease, coming up with a treatment plan, and then also interacting with the patient. Certain aspects of what it means to be a doctor will get automated or will be heavily assisted by AI. Specifically, right now in the diagnostic space, that's an evolving landscape that's happening really fast. I think in the near future, AI will also play an increasingly important role in recommending what the optimal treatment strategy will be. What that means is, you know, again, what it means to be a doctor will be different. And my prediction is that the human aspects of being a doctor, when it comes to gaining trust, when it comes to providing comfort, when the situations get tough, will be increasingly more important. So in a very ironic sense, the rise of AI will force us, humans and physicians to rethink what we are really good at in it. And in my opinion, fundamentally, being a physician and doctor is about providing care, caring about another, another human being, and providing comfort in times of difficulty. And I think that's what we should increasingly focus on as well.
- [14:38]
B
Thank you so much, Dr. Wu. What a remarkable career. I want to thank you for taking the time to spend time with us today on the Beckers Healthcare podcast. Just remarkable what you're doing and what Johns Hopkins is doing. Thank you so much for joining us.
- [14:52]
C
Thank you, Scott, for your time. I really enjoyed our conversation. The pleasure is mine.