NEJM AI Grand Rounds

In this episode of the NEJM AI Grand Rounds podcast, Dr. Nigam Shah , a distinguished Professor of Medicine at Stanford University and inaugural Chief Data Scientist for Stanford Health Care, shares his journey from training as a doctor in India to becoming a leading figure in biomedical informatics in the United States. He discusses the transformative impact of computational tools in understandin...

In this episode of the AI Grand Rounds podcast, Dr. Daphne Koller charts her professional trajectory, tracing her early fascination with computers to her influential role in AI and health care. Initially intrigued by the capacity of computers for decision-making based on theoretical principles, Koller witnessed her niche area — once considered peripheral to AI — grow to dominate the field. Her cur...

In this episode of the AI Grand Rounds podcast, Dr. Eric Horvitz describes his career evolution from an interest in neurobiology to significant contributions in AI, particularly in understanding complex systems and applying AI in medicine. He discusses the shift from studying neurobiology to embracing AI and computational methods as tools for unraveling the complexities of the human mind and broad...

In this episode of the AI Grand Rounds podcast, Dr. James Zou shares his personal journey to discovering machine learning during his graduate studies at Harvard. Fascinated by the potential of AI and its application to genomics and medicine, Dr. Zou embarked on a journey that took him from journalism to the forefront of AI research. He has been instrumental at Stanford in translating machine learn...

In this episode of the AI Grand Rounds podcast, Dr. Roxana Daneshjou shares her journey from a childhood influenced by early exposure to science to her current role as an assistant professor at Stanford. Her path includes a critical shift during medical school, where her interest in computational methods and human genomics led her to pursue both an M.D. and a Ph. D. Her specialization in dermatolo...

In this episode, Dr. Zak Kohane shares his journey into AI and medicine, reflecting on early influences from science fiction authors and programming experiences in his youth. He discusses his academic path, moving from programming and machine instruction to medical school, driven partly by practical advice and personal ambition. Kohane highlights his realization during medical school that medicine...

In this episode, Dr. Judy Wawira Gichoya , Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine, details her journey from Kenya to the United States, from interventional radiology to artificial intelligence. Transcript.  

In this episode, vanguard geneticist Dr. George Church recounts his storied career from his early fascination with computers and science to his pioneering work in genomics and synthetic biology. Dr. Church developed innovative DNA sequencing methods that enabled the first sequencing of the human genome. He was also instrumental in developing CRISPR gene editing technology. Dr. Church discusses his...

In this episode, we’re joined by business magnate and investor Mark Cuban . Cuban describes his journey from humble beginnings as a self-taught programmer to becoming a successful serial entrepreneur and owner of an NBA team. Cuban shares the founding story of his pharmacy benefits company, Cost Plus Drugs, and his vision for reimagining the reimbursement system for care. He also articulates why h...

In this episode, pioneering informatician Dr. Atul Butte guides listeners through his storied career, from his early days as a pediatric endocrinologist and informatician in Boston to his trailblazing work on the West Coast. Dr. Butte describes his trailblazing efforts to both harness large-scale public biomedical data and share patient data across the entire UC Health System. Dr. Butte also discu...

In this thought-provoking episode, Dr. Ziad Obermeyer delves into the complex issues of bias, safety, and generalizability of medical AI. Dr. Obermeyer emphasizes the importance of machine learning researchers’ task formulation, an often-overlooked yet significant determinant of bias in AI algorithms. Highlighting the dual impact of machine learning, he compares two of his works that demonstrate h...

Dr. Marzyeh Ghassemi has been at the forefront of medical machine learning for several years. In this episode, she describes her group’s work and her perspectives on developing and applying machine learning to understand and improve health in ways that are robust, private, and fair. Dr. Ghassemi is an Assistant Professor at MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Institute for M...

Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have proven highly capable of a broad array of natural language tasks including summarizing text, generating prose, and answering questions. This episode’s two guests, Dr. Alan Karthikesalingam and Vivek Natarajan of Google, describe their team’s recent efforts to adapt and evaluate LLMs for clinical applications. Alan and Vivek took very different paths t...

Dr. Michael Abramoff is a renowned ophthalmologist and medical AI pioneer. In this episode, we explore his groundbreaking work that led to the first FDA-authorized device that does not require a physician, IDx-DR, which detects more than mild diabetic retinopathy from digital images of the eye. Dr. Abramoff also reflects on the challenges of commercialization, AI reimbursement, and the ethical imp...

Dr. Peter Lee has shaped computer science from academia, government, and industry. He has chaired a major computer science department, built a new technology office at DARPA, and now serves as Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, where he leads Microsoft Research and its nine worldwide laboratories. In this episode, Peter reveals Microsoft’s interest in health care and the origins of the OpenAI...

Dr. Lily Peng has driven major medical AI efforts along the long and arduous path from ideation to deployment. From publishing a landmark study in 2016 presenting an AI model to detect diabetic retinopathy in retinal fundus photographs to evaluating deep learning systems in India and Thailand, she has a unique and wide-ranging perspective on both model development and real-world validation. She co...

Dr. Pranav Rajpurkar has been at the forefront of medical AI for his entire career. As a graduate student in computer science at Stanford, he created some of the first AI models for radiology and created a suite of datasets and benchmarks that have been widely used by researchers across the world. Now, as a faculty member at Harvard, his group has continued to push the frontier of medical AI acros...

Dr. Euan Ashley is a pioneer. In 2010, he led the team that conducted the first clinical interpretation of a human genome, and he holds the record for the world’s fastest genomic diagnosis. He even has a Guinness World Record to prove it. In this wide-ranging discussion, Dr. Ashley shares the stories behind these feats, his experiences applying artificial intelligence to genomics and to cardiology...

[Transcript] How will AI change clinical practice and healthcare, and how will it impact the patient experience? Who are the people pushing for change and what are their goals? These are just a few of the topics that we hope to explore on NEJM AI Grand Rounds, a new podcast from NEJM Group. This podcast will be an informal conversation with a variety of unique experts exploring the deep issues at...