Episode #205. Healthcare’s Next Revolution Is… a Phone Call?, with Dr. Erin Palm, Medical Lead at Infinitus Systems

Summary

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Risk Never Sleeps Podcast – Episode #205

"Healthcare’s Next Revolution Is… a Phone Call?"
Guest: Dr. Erin Palm, Medical Lead at Infinitus Systems
Host: Ed Gaudet
Date: April 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this lively episode of Risk Never Sleeps, host Ed Gaudet sits down with Dr. Erin Palm, a rare blend of trauma surgeon and product management leader, now Medical Lead at Infinitus Systems. The conversation dives into how AI-driven phone calls are revolutionizing healthcare administration, the nuances of clinical AI safety, lessons from trauma care, and sustaining purpose-driven work in a high-tech, high-risk environment. Dr. Palm shares her unique journey, candid insights on managing risk, and vision for future healthcare evolution.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dr. Erin Palm’s Unique Background

• Trauma Surgeon to Product Leader:

  • Dr. Palm describes learning product management as her "second residency," highlighting the steep but rewarding transition.
  • Notable opening joke comparing trauma surgeons and product managers:

    "They both spend their entire day dealing with screaming customers, but only the surgeon is allowed to put theirs to sleep." — Ed Gaudet [01:04]

• Why Product and Tech?

  • “I went into tech to help the clinicians who are conducting those interactions of taking care of patients.” — Dr. Palm [06:14]
  • Motivation grounded in enabling frontline caregivers.

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2. Infinitus Systems and the Power of the Phone Call

• The Company:

  • Infinitus builds AI phone agents (primarily "Eva") to automate healthcare communications: verifying benefits, managing prior authorizations, and increasingly, patient-facing calls.
  • “We do chat, sms, but mainly our bread and butter has been revenue cycle phone calls to payers to check on benefit status of prior auth…” — Dr. Palm [01:49]

• Impact and Scale:

  • Now 7 years old, Infinitus has processed 10 million calls.
  • Dr. Palm is responsible for both patient safety and clinical quality of their AI agents.

• Solving Administrative Friction:

  • She stresses the need to reduce “friction in healthcare” caused by slow, error-prone call center processes.
  • “If you can automate those calls, you can create better access that's quicker with fewer errors by automated systems.” — Dr. Palm [02:38]

• Agent Personification:

  • AI agents are assigned personas (e.g., "Eva"), highlighting human-like interactions in tech.
  • “We tend to personify these things.” — Dr. Palm [03:48]

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3. Clinical AI Safety and Human Oversight

• Safety First:

  • Dr. Palm’s primary initiative is ensuring “0% failure rate on our clinical safety scales,” with a focus on no “never events,” no data issues, and absolute reliability. [12:54]

• Human in the Loop:

  • Early use of live “backup” humans evolved into an audit model—a set percentage of calls are manually reviewed for quality, with clinical calls audited by nurses.

    “We had live humans behind the calls… that’s evolved to having humans doing evaluations, not synchronously, but after the fact.” — Dr. Palm [13:42]

• Agent Oversight and Governance:

  • Agents are bound to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). Some use a “supervisory agent” to enforce strict protocols in sensitive topics. [13:13]

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4. Career, Personal Insights & Balance

• Work-Life Integration:

  • Dr. Palm shares about raising four children (ages 10, 8, 5, almost 2), juggling clinical work, and her role at Infinitus. [04:53]

• Practicing Medicine as Grounding:

  • Still practices part-time as a trauma surgeon; finds hospital work’s “muscle memory” comforting amid tech’s constant change.

    “When I'm in the hospital, it's not unstable like that at all. It's just a role that I know how to do.” — Dr. Palm [11:45]

• Key Life Lessons:

  • Growth away from perfectionism, prioritizing relationships over always being “right.”

    “It's not worth it to be a perfectionist. ...I've learned to lean into relationships more than doing everything right.” — Dr. Palm [14:21]

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5. Risk, Adventure & Personal Values

• On Risk:

  • Trauma surgery’s risks are borne for others—“It’s risk on behalf of the patient.” [09:02]
  • Equates trauma decision-making with “decisions with incomplete information.” [09:28]

• Recovery & Resilience:

  • Shares story of tearing ACL skiing with her child, and learning to return from setbacks. [10:22]

• Advice to Young Professionals:

  • For would-be doctors or product managers: only pursue medicine if you truly love patient care; otherwise, jump into industry sooner.

    “The only reason to go into residency is if you love taking care of patients... If you want to be in industry ...the sooner the better.” — Dr. Palm [17:07]

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6. Where Healthcare Should Go Next

• AI as an Enabler:

  • Dr. Palm is optimistic about AI automating the "simple things" to grant patients faster access while ensuring clinicians stay in the loop for critical judgments. [18:34]

• No Magic Wand for System Change:

  • Believes the US’s “incentive problem” won’t disappear, but AI can drive meaningful, incremental progress.
  • “I actually have a lot of hope for AI—AI working alongside clinicians to automate the simple things.” — Dr. Palm [18:41]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Feedback. It's a gift if you're willing to receive it, right?” — Ed Gaudet [01:36]
• “Nobody's perfect. ...Preserving the relationship matters.” — Dr. Palm [14:25]
• “Risk never sleeps.” — Ed Gaudet [20:13]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Dr. Palm’s Background & Transition to Product Management: [00:35 – 01:27]
• Infinitus Systems’ Mission & AI in Phone Calls: [01:45 – 02:38]
• Healthcare Friction & Administrative Automation: [02:38 – 03:38]
• Personal Life, Motivations, & Clinical Practice: [04:47 – 06:14], [11:39 – 12:22]
• On Risk & Trauma Surgery: [08:59 – 09:49]
• AI Safety, Human Oversight, and Agent Governance: [12:34 – 14:14]
• Life Lessons – Perfectionism & Relationships: [14:21 – 14:57]
• Advice for Aspiring Healthcare Leaders: [17:07 – 17:37]
• Vision for Healthcare’s Evolution & the Role of AI: [18:34 – 19:43]

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Tone & Personality

• The conversation is candid, warm, humorous, and philosophical. Both Ed and Dr. Palm readily blend professional insight with personal anecdotes, keeping the discussion approachable yet deep.

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Conclusion

Dr. Erin Palm’s vision for “healthcare’s next revolution” is not about flashy tech—it’s about leveraging the humble, familiar phone call, powered by safe, empathic AI, to cut through the administrative morass and reclaim time for both patients and clinicians. Her unique vantage—rooted in hands-on medical experience and product leadership—underscores the need to keep human relationships at the center as technology reshapes the healthcare landscape.

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Welcome to Risk Never Sleeps, where we meet and get to know the people delivering patient care and protecting patient safety. I'm your host, Ed Gaudette. Welcome to the Risk Never Sleeps podcast in which we learn about the people that are on the front lines protecting patient safety and delivering patient care. I'm Ed Gaudette, the host of the program and today I am pleased to be joined by Dr. Aaron Palm. How are you, doctor?

[B]

I'm great.

[A]

Can I call you Aaron?

[B]

Please, please do.

[A]

Great. And I love your background.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

You've got that intersection between medicine, surgeon. You were surgeon, right?

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And products.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Product. Like product management.

[B]

Product management, yeah.

[A]

It's rare. You know that, right?

[B]

It was my second residency. A lot of pain learning to be a product manager after I learned to be a trauma surgeon.

[A]

Okay, good setup for the jo. Okay, what do a trauma surgeon and a product manager have in common?

[B]

You got me.

[A]

That was too quick. I have to read the punchline. They both spend their entire day dealing with screaming customers, but only the surgeon is allowed to put theirs to sleep.

[B]

That's true. I prefer my patients sleep though.

[A]

Yeah, that's pretty funny though, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That was really bad, right? Bad delivery, but that was a good one.

[B]

That was not bad, right?

[A]

Yeah, but it's true, right?

[B]

Yeah. The product manager cannot put their patients

[A]

to sleep and is screaming all the time. Right. It's like. It's a tough job, isn't it?

[B]

It's feedback. It's a gift.

[A]

It is a gift if you're willing to receive it, right?

[B]

Yep, I think so.

[A]

All right, so tell us a little bit about your current organization and your role.

[B]

My role is medical lead at Infinitus Systems.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I am responsible for the safety of our AI agents and the clinical quality of our AI agents. Infinitus is a company that builds agents that do communications for healthcare. Phone calls inbound, outbound. We do chat, sms, but mainly our bread and butter has been revenue cycle phone calls to payers to check on benefit status of prior auth. And increasingly we do patient facing phone calls for both administrative and clinical purposes.

[A]

Okay. How old is the company?

[B]

How long have you been seven years old?

[A]

Oh, seven years. Oh yeah.

[B]

Seven years. 10 million calls under our belt.

[A]

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Anything past I think five years is a real company. Right. You start to get some momentum and a lot of customers. And what's the biggest problem with the problem you solve?

[B]

The friction in health care. I think anybody can identify with how frustrating it can be to Try to reach a healthcare provider or an insurance company on the phone and be put on hold and then be transferred to another department where you have to give the context all over again. And when there's call center operators on the other end of that phone line, there's error introduced in a way that if you can automate those calls, you can create better access that's quicker with fewer errors by automated systems.

[A]

Faster denials. No, just kidding.

[B]

I hope not. I hope.

[A]

Me too.

[B]

I hope that's not the only use case we find.

[A]

Let's hope. Right. That would be a problem with these agents who will kick those agents out. How many agents do you have running?

[B]

Oh, that's an interesting philosophical question, because how do you define an agent?

[A]

How do you define.

[B]

Well, so Eva is the agent Persona that's deployed across multiple use cases.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So folks tend to know Eva no matter whether she's calling for benefits verification or for scheduling. Use case.

[A]

You've given Eva a gender. I love that.

[B]

Interesting, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But we tend to personify these things.

[A]

We do, we do. I was just talking to Heidi. Do you know Heidi?

[B]

Heidi, the company?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yep. Yeah, exactly. Well, I used to work for a company that's called Suki.

[A]

I saw that.

[B]

And Suki definitely has. It's a personality. Right.

[A]

And what's Suki doing these days?

[B]

A lot of different things that are very exciting.

[A]

Really? Oh, you stay in touch closely? Yeah. Are you an advisor still?

[B]

I'm not formally an advisor, no.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. What do they do, Suki?

[B]

Suki builds ambient clinical intelligence. It's a AI scribe company.

[A]

Nice. So that competes with Heidi for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But Heidi's in Australia. Where was Suki?

[B]

Us.

[A]

US Based. Okay.

[B]

Yeah, it's based in the Bay area. Infinitus is also in the San Francisco Bay.

[A]

Is that where you live?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Whereabouts?

[B]

I'm in Los Altos in the South Bay.

[A]

I love Los Altos. It's beautiful. Do you ever been to La Ferette? La Ferray?

[B]

I don't think so.

[A]

It's El Minion, San Jose area.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Okay.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It's like a five star restaurant.

[B]

I don't get out much these days. I have four kids.

[A]

Ooh.

[B]

So eating out is a big endeavor.

[A]

What ages?

[B]

10, 8, 5 and 1. Almost 2.

[A]

What, you just had a baby?

[B]

Yep. It's busy. Yep. Surgery tech, baby.

[A]

Not in that order of priority, right?

[B]

No, not at all. Not at all.

[A]

Those are great ages, though. You want to just, like, freeze time, right?

[B]

I know, they're fantastic.

[A]

So we just had our first grandson.

[B]

Oh, congrats. Yeah.

[A]

He's one in March. Yeah.

[B]

Happy birthday. And it's.

[A]

Yeah. And I become that annoying, doting grandparent that I. Yeah. It's so great. Yeah. Look, he smiled. Look, he can count. He's. Look, he's touching his fingers. He wants food. He's saying more.

[B]

Amazing.

[A]

It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. What do you love about healthcare? Because you've pretty much spent your life in it.

[B]

To me, it started out as an adventure into sides of the human experience that most people don't have access to. So as a trauma surgeon and surgical intensivist, I've shared moments of people's lives with them that are some of the most important moments in their lives. Now. They've been terrible moments in those people's lives.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it can be rough to do that day in and day out, which is one of the reasons I initially went into tech to help the people, the clinicians who are conducting those interactions of taking care of patients.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that was the initial motivation to go into tech, was to serve clinicians.

[A]

Yeah. You must be the most empathetic person I've met today. I can just see it in your eyes.

[B]

Oh, well, I'm not sure that my kids would necessarily agree with you.

[A]

But your whole mission. Right. Everything you've done is really to help people.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is incredible. All right, so you go back 20 years or you can go back or maybe 20 years for you and see your 20 year old self. What would you say to that person?

[B]

Well, there's really no set path, so I've just chased the things that interested me at the time. And what I figured out is that I love learning. So that's maybe what I might tell myself is find the things that keep me on a steep learning curve.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Because it's okay to change directions to find that stimulation. Motivation.

[A]

Yeah. No, I think it's. Having a learning life is an important thing and I think we should all be open to learning new things and letting the universe reveal the journey. I think that's what you were saying. In some sense.

[B]

Yes. For sure.

[A]

Yeah. Where are you from originally? Because you have a bit of a. Interesting. I'm trying to figure it out. I'm hearing something.

[B]

I grew up in Sonoma county in Northern California. I was born in the U.S. virgin Islands.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So that might be some of where it's from.

[A]

Yes, I'm hearing a little bit of that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But.

[B]

So I still work part time at Valley Medical Center. In San Jose. It's a level one trauma center. And we're talking about this. How do I speak? I think it's the homegirl, like Northern California. I speak Spanish and English kind of way of speaking.

[A]

Me, too. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

I actually think that's more from.

[A]

Not the Caribbean island or.

[B]

Could be. I don't know.

[A]

Yeah. Do you get back there at all?

[B]

Now and then? I'd love to go. I was last out there in Puerto Rico at the Sail Conference.

[A]

Oh, nice.

[B]

That Healthcare AI conference. That's a great meeting. Yeah, I'd love to go back.

[A]

They were talking about having AI Med there one year, so that would be great, wouldn't it? Let's go. Let's do it. I just got back from Aruba. You've been to Aruba?

[B]

I haven't.

[A]

Oh, it's beautiful. Some people say it's better than Hawaii. I don't believe them, but they've said

[B]

that Hawaii is closer on the West Coast.

[A]

So he's not Aruba by any stretch of the imagination. Yeah. Big reader.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. You like City Lights Bookstore?

[B]

I love it.

[A]

It's my favorite.

[B]

Oh, what a beautiful spot.

[A]

Isn't it great?

[B]

Yeah. A friend of mine took me there for the first time.

[A]

Recently or.

[B]

No, actually, it's about 10 years ago. A friend of mine took me there and, like, walked me through and bought me a book. It was lovely.

[A]

Nice. Do you go to any of the bars in the area or.

[B]

No, I had to get home to take care of the kids.

[A]

Somebody was calling. Where are you?

[B]

I know, exactly.

[A]

Kids are melting down. Oh. All right. So what's the riskiest thing you've ever done?

[B]

I thought about this question because you sent it to me ahead of time.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

It's interesting. In trauma, you would think we take a lot of risk. Right. As a trauma surgeon, there was a beloved surgical teacher at Stanford who, as he was scrubbing into a case with a resident, he noticed the resident was real nervous to do the case and he said, relax, I haven't lost a resident yet. Right. So it's not risk we take on our own behalf, it's risk on behalf of the patient.

[A]

Yeah, you deal with risk every minute of the day.

[B]

Every minute. Decisions with incomplete information is what we deal with in trauma.

[A]

Yeah. I think that's why doctors, in particular physicians, are so impatient with tech and the security around Tech.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because if I have to save the limb or save the data, I'm going to save the limb all day long, right?

[B]

For sure.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. If you're not doing this job. I know you have children, but assume you can retire tomorrow and your kids are all grown up and they've left.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What would you do? What are you most passionate about?

[B]

Well, I just spent the last week intentionally snowed in Tahoe and I'm looking at those ski instructors and thinking they have a pretty good life. And actually one of the ski teachers in the ski school, I heard himself introducing himself as a retired lawyer who's a ski teacher for his second career. That looks pretty good to me.

[A]

Do you ski a lot?

[B]

I try, yeah.

[A]

Are you a good skier?

[B]

I was. I tore my ACL last year skiing with my 4 year old. So I'm coming back from my ACL reconstruction.

[A]

Doing glades with a 4 year old.

[B]

I know, exactly. I had him on one of those leashes and he crashed and I skied right over him.

[A]

Oh, no. Was he okay?

[B]

He was fine, but my ACL was gone.

[A]

You ever jump out of a helicopter?

[B]

No.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Not yet, no.

[A]

Someday it's on your bucket list. It might be swimming with the sharks. Do you dive?

[B]

I don't. I would snorkel a lot in Saint John. And there's barracudas.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

There's not a lot of sharks. There are tiger sharks, maybe.

[A]

Yeah, there's some sharks out there. Yeah. Yeah. Barracudas are. Can be. Yeah.

[B]

I swam right up like inches away from barracuda's face.

[A]

They. Yeah, they don't move, they don't blink. What was the most interesting thing so far you've seen at this show? I know it's only like day one, day two for some people.

[B]

Yeah. Walking around the exhibit hall was a lot of fun. Actually, you know what? In this meeting now, because I've been in digital health for eight plus years now, I know a lot of these folks. It's like a meeting. We come to all meet each other.

[A]

It's like a high school reunion.

[B]

Yeah. And admire each other's work. And there's some great work going on out there.

[A]

Yeah, sure. Yeah. And you're still practicing?

[B]

I am, yeah.

[A]

What's that like balancing being a practicing physician and.

[B]

Yeah. I find being in the hospital very grounding. It's something that I've done for so long that I know it, I know my role and know how to do it. It keeps me in touch with why I do the digital health things. On the startup side in digital health, like tomorrow's never going to be like today. So you're always a little unstable. Like your footing's a Little unstable, but when I'm in the hospital, it's not unstable like that at all. It's just a role that I know how to do.

[A]

Yeah. It's sort of muscle memory and rote to some extent, right?

[B]

Yeah. A little reassuring that I know how to do something right. Because in this AI world, everything's a new frontier.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You almost have to split your brain

[B]

in some ways for sure.

[A]

Yeah. What are some of the key initiatives you have over the next 24 months? What are you looking at doing outside of practicing medicine?

[B]

My main focus in infinitus is standing up our clinical evaluations to make sure that all of the agent interactions we have, particularly with patients, are clinically high quality and safe. So my main objective Is to have 0% failure rate on our clinical safety scales.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

That means none of the never events, no headlines for our customers. Everything is quiet, peaceful, boring. Boring would be good.

[A]

No drift, no data poisoning, no hallucinations, none of that stuff. Right.

[B]

Certainly.

[A]

Who controls eva?

[B]

Who controls eva?

[A]

Do you have a governing agent that governs the agents?

[B]

That's interesting. So there's like standard operating procedure built into each agent interaction. And then the agent is evaluated against its adherence to that standard operating procedure. And there actually are certain topics where EVA has to be much more scripted than other topics. So there is like a supervisory agent that says, when we're on one of those topics.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Interesting. And then how do you keep the human in the loop with agents?

[B]

So for a long time, we had live humans behind the calls, but this is years ago. Right. As we learned to do AI in the wild, that's evolved to having humans doing evaluations, not synchronously, but after the fact. So a percentage of the calls are effectively audited and have a person doing an evaluation. And it depends who does the evaluation, depends on what type of call. So if it's a highly clinical call, it has a trained nurse doing the evaluation. If it's more of an administrative call, it's like a call center operator profile

[A]

that evaluates biggest lesson in life. Maybe a mistake you made or something you might have learned over time.

[B]

Oh, goodness. It's not worth it to be a perfectionist.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Nobody's perfect.

[A]

No.

[B]

And actually, I think over time, in my job especially, I've learned to lean into relationships more than doing everything right. I think that's something that comes with age, no?

[A]

Yeah, it does. Yeah. Yeah. I tell my kids I have that disease called being right all the time. It's a sickness. It's an illness. I don't want to be the person being right all the time. It's a heavy load sometimes.

[B]

It doesn't matter who's right. It's preserving the relationship that matters. But I. Somebody who.

[A]

So true.

[B]

Had to learn how to back down.

[A]

I had to quit drinking in order to figure that out, actually. That's sobriety. Helped me with that, actually. Interesting.

[B]

Yeah, there's a story there.

[A]

Oh, there's so many stories, Doctor. Which is why I don't go to the. No, I'm just kidding. I said that last time and I freaked somebody out. You don't go to the doctors. What do you mean? What do you mean? All right, you're on an island and you literally were on an island. You could bring five records with you. Albums or movies, depending on what genre you'd like to. What would you bring?

[B]

So I also read this question ahead of time and I have to say I spent my entire flight thinking about it. Oh, no. Prepared for this more than I prepared for any of the other things I'm doing here at Vive.

[A]

Stop it. Seriously, stop it.

[B]

Yeah, it's so interesting.

[A]

I know.

[B]

So this is like.

[A]

People tell me that all the time and I just blow.

[B]

The first thing I thought is, do they even make albums? Like, can they think of an end to end piece of artistry? That's an album. But anyway, that's another topic. So this is my like 90s girl coming out. Yeah, I love Radiohead.

[A]

Oh, my God. Ok, computer. Favorite.

[B]

Okay. Oh, I love it.

[A]

Yes. I listen to it all the time. I just listened to it today, this morning.

[B]

One I thought of was the Benz, but it could go with. Okay, computer too.

[A]

This is great too.

[B]

Yeah. And then it was like, that's a downer if I'm by myself, really. So then I was like, what would be upbeat? So Weezer Blue album.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. That's great. Weezer.

[B]

I thought of a movie for you too.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Forest Gump.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Forrest Gump is a good movie.

[B]

Yeah. You could watch that over and over.

[A]

Yeah, you could. It's like a Forest Gump, actually.

[B]

Anyway, that's what I have for you.

[A]

That's it. Two albums and a movie.

[B]

Okay. My. Like my runner up having seen Green Day perform in the super bowl just a couple weeks would be that American Idiot.

[A]

Yeah, It's a great album. Yeah. Yeah. When September Comes or When what is it?

[B]

When September Ends.

[A]

When September Ends. Yeah. About his dad. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. So, yeah, it's a great song. What advice would you give to someone that is Graduating school and wants to get into healthcare and be a trauma surgeon or a product manager.

[B]

Yeah. I think learning the clinical side of things is always valuable. Yeah. But I advise a lot of medical students deciding whether they're going to go into residency or go into industry. And I think really the only reason to go into residency is if you love taking care of patients. If you want to do the bedside medicine, then do the bedside medicine. If you want to be in industry and you don't really care for the bedside, then go into industry. The sooner the better.

[A]

It's hard.

[B]

Yeah. If you don't want to be there with the patient, there's no point in doing it because it's a long road.

[A]

Yeah. Humans are awful. We're awful people, aren't we?

[B]

I really like people, I have to say.

[A]

I'm just kidding. I wanted to see how empathetic you were, and you passed the test. Congratulations, Doctor. We have a gift for you at the booth.

[B]

Awesome. Appreciate it. Yeah.

[A]

No, but. No, it's. It is hard. Patients are hard, too. Right. And they're demanding, and they should be demanding. And. And it's hard when you're in that bed and there's nobody there to take care of you and you're trying to advocate for yourself and no one's listening. The thing, the. The alarms are going off and the notifications go up, everything's beeping, and it's a tough job.

[B]

Yeah. Well, it's hard for the healthcare professionals on the front line, too, when there's so much under staff, they're understaffed.

[A]

Yeah. It's. We have to fix health care.

[B]

Yeah. Although I think my opinion is fix healthcare is something people don't really believe in anymore, but evolve it or make it more accessible.

[A]

How do we do that? Do you have any thoughts on that?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If you could wave a magic wand, how would you fix healthcare? We're going off script here, but I think this is an interesting question.

[B]

I do think that in the US we have an incentive problem, but we just have to work with the incentives we're given. I don't think the system's going to change dramatically in the next five years. So working within the systems that we have, I actually have a lot of hope for AI. You do AI working alongside clinicians to automate the simple things. Yeah. I think it's going to get patients more access to the things they need faster.

[A]

Yeah. No, I think it certainly allows us to remove the manual rote steps that people have to do to schedule things or to take notes Or. But I'm not sure I'd want an agent running the da Vinci.

[B]

Yeah, well, the da Vinci specifically. I actually wouldn't mind if I could get the access. Right. You have to set up the robot in the operating room. So as a general surgeon, you have to put the ports in the right place. And then if I could sit back in that booth and watch it operate and then come online when it needs the surgeon's help, I actually wouldn't mind that at all. Really, I wouldn't mind that at all.

[A]

Why is that? Have you. You used.

[B]

I did train with a da Vinci. I'm not an expert robotic surgeon, but I think the computer vision actually does really well at identifying structures and doing simple things. But then when the surgeon judgment needs to be involved, I think the. The surgeon would always be closely in the loop, even if it's operating autonomously. This is not my area of expertise, though. I could introduce you to folks

[A]

I'm just fascinated by.

[B]

Yeah, I think it can operate.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This is the Risk Never Sleeps podcast, live from Vive 2026 LA. And if you're on the front lines delivering patient care or taking care of patient safety, remember to stay vigilant, because Risk never sleeps. Thanks for listening to Risk Never Sleeps. For the show, notes, resources and more information and how to transform the protection of patient safety, Visit [e-mail] that's C-E N S I N E T dot com. I'm your host, Ed Gaudet. And until next time, stay vigilant because Risk never sleeps.