Ahmed says health AI’s advantage depends on access to data

Transcript

From the transcript Inside Blackstone publishes with the episode.

1. 16:59

   just in terms of of an AI-enabled healthcare future? So now you've got all these different types of data sets that previously didn't talk to each other at all. And these are patterns that maybe, you know, some of the best doctors can see and eyeball quickly. But for the most part, an AI is going to do better than a human being because there's just so much data to look at, and there's going to be population trends where if we see this biomarker and this heart rate signal and this medical record note, these three things signal blank.

2. 17:35

   And all of a sudden you just you're going to have this like avalanche, I think of insights that are that are coming out that I think are going to be really profound. For our audience members that are investors, how do you think, how would you be investing into this new AI- enabled healthcare world? Well, I'll caveat by saying that I think Blackstone has thought a lot more about this than I have. One of the most interesting things with AI in general, but I think is particularly true of healthcare, is who has the data.

3. 18:07

   It's all about the data because the AI piece is going to largely take care of itself. You've got the ability for large language models to explain information. You've got companies like WHOOP developing frontier AI that's, you know, able to actually train on top of the data and create future insights. But there it is again, data, like you got to have the data. And when you pull this data together, that's where the magic happens.

4. 18:37

   A lot of people do talk about the trade-offs between having, giving up some personal privacy when they give up data like this, but it feels like that's sort of the path of travel if we're going to really see health outcomes improve. How do you think about that, that trade-off? I don't necessarily think that you should have to give up privacy and drive towards health outcomes. At WHOOP we're certainly trying to avoid that at all costs.

5. 19:03

   We've also taken the steps to become HIPAA compliant, which is a big step as it relates to data privacy and security. We really don't want consumers to have to decide, oh, do I want to have great health outcomes or do I want to have privacy? So curious to have you tell us a little bit about why continuous monitoring versus, you know, sort of let's say you go to your your doctor once a year and you get your blood taken and you get your blood pressure, and that's your marker for a whole year versus what you're doing here, what I'm doing here.

6. 19:34

   First of all, it's just the general well-being of the population. 50% of America is hypertensive. Another 25% is pre-hypertensive. You've got 1 in 3 Americans will be diabetic. You've got healthcare costs for the United States, $4.9 trillion. A member of Congress described the United States to me as a health care company with a military. When you actually look at the spending, that kind of woke me up, when a Congressman says that, and something needs to change.

7. 20:11

   What have you seen that's most fascinating in the data from your users?