AI is transforming health care at breakneck speed, and the stakes couldn't be higher. In this session, Dr. Bob Wachter—one of the country's leading voices on health-care AI—will lead a conversation with three of the Bay Area's foremost experts on what this transformation actually means for patients, clinicians, and the health-care system.

The questions on the table are ones we all need to grapple with: Can AI be trusted with your health? Can AI companies be trusted with your data? Are we approaching the era of an "AI doctor”—and if so, is that a good thing? Will AI bend the cost curve, or just add another expensive layer to an already broken system?

The panelists bring rare and complementary perspectives: a prominent health-care investor who has bet big on AI's future, a leader of a successful AI-enabled startup turning that bet into reality, and a leading AI researcher from a major academic medical center who is stress-testing what these tools can and can't do. Expect honest disagreement, hard questions, and a clear-eyed look at both the opportunities and the risks.

About the Speakers

Jonathan Chen, M.D., Ph.D., is a physician-scientist with professional software development experience and graduate training in computer science. He completed medical training in internal medicine and a VA research fellowship in medical informatics. At Stanford, Dr. Chen leads a research group that seeks to empower individuals with the collective experience of the many, combining human and artificial intelligence approaches that will deliver better care than either can alone. 

Ami Parekh, M.D., J.D., leads the strategy, operations and quality for Included Health's national primary care, urgent care, behavioral health, clinical navigation and population health management practices. Previously, she was chief medical officer for population health and clinical integration at UCSF Health, and also worked at McKinsey. Ami serves on the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts board of directors. After Yale Medical School and Yale Law School, she completed her Internal Medicine Residency at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Bryan Roberts joined Venrock in 1997 and has partnered with early-stage entrepreneurs innovating across health care and life sciences. Roberts is currently involved with companies across therapeutics, genomics, and health tech, including Aledade, Devoted Health, Element Biosciences, Encoded Therapeutics, Included Health, Interdict, Kelonia Therapeutics, Lyra Health, Moonlight Bio, SmithRx and Suki.ai. Past investments include 10x Genomics (NASDAQ: TXG), Ariosa Diagnostics (acquired by Roche), Ironwood Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: IRWD), Receptos (acquired by Celgene), Sirna Therapeutics (acquired by Merck), and Zeltiq (acquired by Allergan). Roberts received his Ph.D. in chemistry and chemical biology from Harvard University. He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College.

Robert M. Wachter, M.D., is professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Author of 300 articles and 6 books, he coined the term “hospitalist” in 1996 and is often considered the “father” of the hospitalist field, the fastest-growing medical specialty in U.S. history. He is a past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, past chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine, a Master of the American College of Physicians, and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. Modern Healthcare magazine has ranked him among the 50 most influential physician-executives in the United States more than a dozen times; he was number one on the list in 2015. His 2015 book, The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age, was a New York Times bestseller. His new book, A Giant Leap: How AI is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future, was an instant Amazon and USA Today national bestseller.