Eric Topol

Again, we're behind, but we're seeing now the output.

So there's companies that are giving you your retina picture that you get from your eye doctor and telling you your risk of heart disease based on that.

And also one that's giving risk of Alzheimer's disease.

So it isn't here yet, but eventually it should be the norm.

This is what we call opportunistic imaging, where there's so much in that image that we're leaving on the table.

And AI can give us so much more.

And it's just software.

It's not any extra cost.

So eventually we'll get there.

You know, I kid that eventually we'll take selfies of our own retina and have an AI algorithm give us an output of like every part of our body, every condition that we might be at risk for.

if you want to get that information.

But we're not there yet because right now we still rely on the kind of high-quality retina images that you get from an eye doctor.

Yes, this is where I have the most excitement for the future of medicine, and in particular, the use of AI.

I think in the years ahead, we will regard AI's most important contribution as facilitating prevention.

Prevention, especially of these three age-related diseases that we've been talking about, because they are 80, 85% of the difference between healthspan and lifespan.

So we are at a time when 20 years ahead or more, we can tell a person, let's say they're age 50, not only are they at high risk for one of these diseases, but we can also tell them for the first time when, not just if.

Then we can do all these things so that we changed what would be their natural history.

And I am confident eventually we're going to have ways to prevent these big three age-related diseases.

And that's why, you know, we're starting very soon the first prevention of Alzheimer's trial.

in 1,200 people with very high risk of Alzheimer's because of their ApoE4 genetics, their protein markers, PTAL217, their family history, their polygenic risk.