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Excited to be heading to Australia this week as part of a five-city talk tour organized by UBS Australia. They’ve assembled a great lineup of speakers who will be exploring the evolving global landscape in business and health tech. I'm keynoting on what's next for AI. The cities and dates for the tour include: Brisbane: February 12 Adelaide: February 13 Melbourne: February 17 Sydney: February 18 Perth: February 20 Along the way I'll also be catching up with some of my favorite AI and digital health experts who are doing great things "Down Under." Oh yeah… It’s summertime in Australia. Not so much in Seattle. T.

I’ve been pondering how many journalists and podcasters I’ve ticked off when answering this question: Where will AI be in a year? My answer has always been simple and honest: No one knows. This week the Chinese start-up DeepSeek is the latest shift in AI’s tectonic plates. Seemingly out of nowhere, it became the top-rated AI app in the United States. Deepseek’s new, open-source AI model rivals the abilities of OpenAI's most recent model—with far less investment and using reduced-capacity chips. Training costs for ChatGPT-4 were over $100 million. Deepseek’s investment was supposedly $6 million. Deepseek’s model improves energy efficiency making AI more accessible to more people and industries and could be welcomed news when it comes to AI’s environmental impact. There’s a lot to be learned about Deepseek’s capabilities. For now, it certainly ups the ante in the AI “space race” for global tech titans and governments. I can hear the hype machines starting to churn as I write this. Here’s a solid piece from Scientific American that outlines what is known. And so: Where will AI be in a year? No one knows. T.

I am pleased to announce that I have a new book coming in April. Whether a patient, health consumer, physician, nurse, health executive, or elected official, somewhere deep in our brains is this simple truth: the American health system isn’t working, and it will only get worse if we don’t do something about it. Despite spending more money per capita on healthcare than any other country in the world, the U.S. struggles to match other nations in life expectancy, health outcomes and general well-being. Meanwhile the system spends more on unnecessary, ineffective and wasteful services than what we collectively invest in K-12 education in America. All the while, our health status is declining. For the first time kids born today may not live as long as their older siblings. Health Care Nation shines a light on the deep interconnectedness between the health of people and the health of a nation. It’s about the opportunity and responsibility each of us has to reimagine and reengineer a system that focuses on keeping all citizens healthy and caring for them when they are not. Health Care Nation takes readers on a journey to understand the fundamental issues driving the system in the wrong direction. It focuses on helping each reader find or sharpen their voice in what should change based on their views, values and experiences. Health Care Nation awakens readers to the possibilities that exist today that are right in front of us if only we choose to see them. It creates an understanding of the forces at work in healthcare today that are driving us in the wrong direction, instilling readers with a sense of activism that mobilizes them to take action. The ultimate goal of this book is to help everyone find and use their voice to drive positive change. Health Care Nation is designed to help readers understand the role they can play and actions they can take to determine the health and economic well-being for generations to come. My publisher is doing an early book launch at the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas March 3-6. Would love to see you if attending. Look for me at the HIMSS bookstore near the exhibit hall. I'll be signing advance copies. Health Care Nation is also available for preorder on Amazon. For more information about the book go to www.healthcarenation.us .

With January comes a sea of predictions for 2025. Many are insightful, but if you're a health leader tracking AI developments, here are three emerging themes to pay attention to. The Great AI Pivot: From FOMO to Value Since the Fall of 2022, AI hasn’t been just a technological shift—it’s been a cultural phenomenon. Conversations about AI spread from the conference room to the dinner table. Organizations adopted it at breakneck speed, and the fear of missing out (FOMO) drove up to 60% of AI’s recent adoption. One study found that 63% of leaders feared their organizations would fall behind if they didn’t join the AI gold rush. In the coming year, forward-thinking leaders will pivot from pursuing limited-value AI applications to investing in ecosystems of people and processes that generate scalable, repeatable value (think innovation flywheel). This is a different mindset compared to the approach taken by many leaders in the last two years. It’s a recognition that AI is here to stay and that creating “value-at-scale” requires the adoption of a growth mindset for what’s ahead.

Welcome to 2025! I'm hopeful it's the year that we'll move from AI FOMO (fear of missing out) to focusing on driving value at scale in support of our missions and enterprises. To get started, Deloitte’s 16th annual Tech Trends report is a great quick read. AI is the common thread of nearly every trend. Moving forward, it will be part of the substructure of everything we do. The report is available here . Here's to an intelligent new year! T.

Looking forward to being back in Singapore next week to speak at/attend APACMed 2024. Healthcare across Asia Pacific is changing. Consumers are increasingly gravitating towards health organizations that provide greater convenience. This includes the use of digital and AI solutions that allow them to be more involved in managing their health.

“It's not how old you are, it's how you are old.” - Jules Renard

While Shakespeare popularized the phrase “the eyes are the window to your soul,” new research suggests that our eyes may also be a window to predicting cardiac, pulmonary, metabolic, and neuropsychiatric diseases.  Physician-researchers from Harvard Medical School, Mass Eye and Ear, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have found that they can estimate how likely a person is to develop eye and other systemic diseases by using AI to combine retinal imaging, genetics, and big data. [i ] Retinal imaging is already a commonplace procedure used by Ophthalmologists and Optometrists to evaluate eye health. However, the results of this study suggest its use could be widened. The findings focus on how the thinning of different layers of the retina correlates to an increased risk of developing ocular, cardiac, pulmonary, metabolic, and neuropsychiatric diseases. Previous studies have shown links between retinal health and health conditions, such as aging, cardiometabolic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension, and neurological diseases such as dementia, stroke, and multiple sclerosis. Unlike previous studies that searched for genes associated with overall retinal health, this study delved deeper into the role of the different cell layers that make up the retina. Further research is needed to confirm actual causality, but for now, there is evidence to suggest that retinal imaging might be used in the future to predict and better manage multiple systemic health conditions including poor heart, metabolic, lung, and kidney function. While eye health is critically important on its own, imagine a time when going in for your routine eye examination could also shed light on other areas impacting your future health and well-being. The new study uncovers possibilities for preventive medicine and cross-collaboration between ophthalmology and other areas of medicine. [i] U sing Retinal Images to Predict Risk of Eye and Systemic Diseases, Harvard Medical School News and Research, February 1, 2024, https://hms.harvard.edu/news/using-retinal-images-predict-risk-eye-systemicdiseases