Bob Wachter

It's just there's no way to get the work done that needs to be done.

Is it cutting down on pajama time?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And in a way that is very meaningful for physicians to the point that it has led them to be open to, OK, that was great.

What's the next thing?

Okay, so what is the next thing for AI in healthcare?

That's coming up after the break.

I'm Stephen Dubner.

This is the Freakonomics Radio Guide to Getting Better.

If you haven't heard the earlier episodes in our series, they are sitting right behind this one in your podcast queue.

And we will be right back.

Bob Wachter, who is chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, has been telling us that AI has recently been proven super helpful to health care providers by acting as a digital scribe and cutting down on other paperwork.

So that's great.

But how about some more ambitious uses of AI in health care?

For that, we will go to Pierre Elias.

He did research with Wachter at UCSF, took leave from medical school to work for an AI healthcare startup, then went back and got his medical degree in 2016.

And what is Elias up to now?

Okay, that's the part I want to hear more about.

What does that mean exactly, to be medical director for artificial intelligence at a big urban hospital chain like that?