Bob Wachter

My sense is that in writing this book, you, a busy and accomplished person, decided to become even busier and accomplish something else.

And it seems as though you sort of got yourself a graduate degree in healthcare AI by speaking with all these healthcare professionals.

administrators, tech firms, investors, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Can you just talk about what this journey slash process was like for you, why you decided to undertake it, and then who you actually did spend time speaking with?

The things I was reading were written by technologists, and I don't think they understood the big picture, the policy, the politics, the economics.

And so my wife, who's a journalist and writes for The New York Times, said, the only way you're going to get this right is to do it journalistically.

And I said, what does that mean?

She said, you're going to have to go and talk to a lot of people.

Who did I talk to?

I tried to find interesting companies and interesting people doing cool stuff.

And when I spoke to them, I asked them, who else should I speak to?

And they told me about other interesting people.

I know the world of clinical medicine well.

I know the world of academic medicine well and medical education.

I live in San Francisco, so I'm surrounded by technologists.

I advise a bunch of tech companies.

So in each of those areas, I knew a fair amount to get started and knew some of the players, but I had to go deeper.

The first chapter in the book is called An Overnight Revolution, 50 Years in the Making.

Can you just talk for a moment about what happened during those 50 years, the successes, the failures, and why it's been such a slow boil?

Yeah, I can do it quickly if we talk successes, and it'll take longer to do failures.