A 50-year history of AI in healthcare

For 50 years, the healthcare industry has been trying (and failing) to harness the power of artificial intelligence. It may finally be ready for prime time. What will this mean for human doctors — and the rest of us? (Part four of “The Freakonomics Radio Guide to Getting Better.”)

• SOURCES:
  • Bob Wachter, professor, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
  • Pierre Elias, cardiologist, assistant professor of biomedical informatics at Columbia University, medical director for artificial intelligence at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

• RESOURCES:
  • A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future, by Bob Wachter (2026).
  • "Epic Systems (MyChart)," by Acquired (2025).
  • "Detecting structural heart disease from electrocardiograms using AI," by Pierre Elias and Timothy Poterucha (Nature, 2025).
  • "What Are the Risks of Sharing Medical Records With ChatGPT?" by Maggie Astor (New York Times, 2025).
  • "Will Generative Artificial Intelligence Deliver on Its Promise in Health Care?" by Bob Wachter and Erik Brynjolfsson (JAMA, 2023).
  • The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age, by Bob Wachter (2015).

• EXTRAS:
  • "The Doctor Won’t See You Now," by Freakonomics Radio (2025).
  • "How to Stop Worrying and Love the Robot Apocalypse (Update)," by Freakonomics Radio (2024).

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