Bob Wachter

Epic won this market.

This was a little tiny company started by Judy Faulkner in the basement of an apartment off the University of Wisconsin.

It's a really remarkable story.

I think they won because they were the best.

The best was partly...

Judy's theory of the case was we're not going to bolt on 37 different tools by a bunch of different companies.

We're going to own the entire thing, and that is going to allow us to provide an integrated solution.

And medicine is so complex and there's so many moving parts that if you don't have an integrated solution, the thing's not going to work very well.

Over the past few episodes in this Freakonomics Radio guide to getting better, we've looked at a variety of things that may produce a longer and healthier life.

Nutritional supplements, faster drug approvals, figuring out the secrets of the gut microbiome.

And today, in the final episode of this series, we'll look at something that intersects with all of those things and maybe a trillion more.

Today's topic, how artificial intelligence will change healthcare.

And why is the healthcare system in need of change?

If you look closely, you'll see a bizarre split.

The advances in medicine and medical technology over the past century have been mind-blowing.

But the way these advances are delivered to actual patients can be also mind-blowing, but in a bad way.

The healthcare system has so much technology slop that it can be hard to see just how good the actual medical technology is.

But that may be about to end.

If you think about it, this is the biggest experiment in the history of medicine.

And the experiment is already underway.