What does it actually cost when a diagnosis comes six months too late, a test gets ordered twice, or a treatment decision gets made without the best information available?
In this special recap episode of Signal & Symptoms, we synthesize the strongest healthcare AI insights from previous episodes — moving from the promise of what AI can do, to the real patient stories that reveal what's at stake when we delay, to an honest look at the barriers still standing in the way, and finally to the path ahead for clinicians and leaders ready to act.
This isn't a hype episode. It's a practical reckoning: AI is already changing how diagnoses get made, how patients advocate for themselves, and how the next generation of healthcare standards will be written. The only question is whether you'll help shape it — or watch it happen without you.
"The technology is not the issue. The brilliant people are doing brilliant things. We just have to make it happen — from a leadership perspective."
- Edward Marx, CEO of Marx Advisory
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What You’ll Discover
[00:00] Intro
[00:48] What We Expect From AI vs. What's True
[02:54] How Patients Are Moving Faster Than the System
We have an article from Microsoft that basically says, believe it or not, that the AI is around 80% on really tough cases and us humans, the expert in the loop, doctors as myself are around 20%.
Edward Marx:
I text my PCP. I said, "Can I get an MRI, please?" And so I put it in to AI and it told me exactly what my problem was, what I needed to do. Now I still kept my ortho appointment which was 7 weeks later and he told the exact same thing that AI told me exact same thing
Dr. Kianor Shah:
In the next 3 5 years we're going to create the first trillionaires in the world that are going to come out knowing how to utilize AI to improve qualities which we have never had before so yes that assessment is about right
Edward Marx:
I do believe that this whole AI and I call it concierge AI will do to uh transportation you know what Uber and Lyft have done, and it's totally blew it up right and I think we're going to see
the same thing happen it's different than Dr. Google because Dr. Google was
very limited. The tech wasn't very advanced and there was just a few people that were really into it would show up at the physician office, you know, and be expert in their own mind.
But it was good to empower the patient. They should. I think I would think as a clinician that you would appreciate that. I know my wife appreciate it when they had some knowledge of what was
happening. So I think the game it's different. So you know a quick analogy and I know it's not the same as medical at all but in terms of you know the whole framework if you I'm not a programmer and I think you've already talked about Junaid uh where you could go in and we all know these stories where someone doesn't know any programming and within an hour they could program something that used to take a year and so it's just amazing tool we all know the power we've been talking about it everybody knows
Dr. Harvey Castro:
fundamentally we have an article from Microsoft that basically says believe it or not that the AI is around 80% on really tough cases and us humans the expert in the loop doctors as myself are around 20%. Right off the cuff. I know that doctors around the world are saying, you know what, is this a textbook presentation?
Because if it is, of course, it's going to get it right. And the other part, my data scientists around the world are looking at this and saying, well, this is kind of cheating because if the AI
knows about these cases ahead of time and it's trained into the data set, then obviously it's going to perform higher than the human because it already saw the case. And so it becomes really fundamental question is this really hype or is this really something true science that we actually don't understand and that it actually can make a fundamental change in medicine.
Edward Marx:
Now if I had AI cuz I'm doing this now. I would have been taking my labs and putting in an AI and I guarantee you it would have said cuz my wife was telling me the whole time go, you know, get get um a next level exam, you know, a pathology exam so that you can really know cuz you're a high risk. The markers say everything. And I would have found it at stage one and I would have been able to take some easy medicines and I would have been fine. Instead, I had to go through this horrific experience. Everything turned out fine, but it's still a horrific experience I could have avoided.
Dr. Junaid Kalia:
Great to the force that everything turned out. But you are absolutely right. Early detection is one of the key value drivers. We are working uh breast cancer detection, bleeding, chest X-ray,
pneumonia, neoporex, TB because not only that I mean u people have been asking really odd things, right? I mean we are working on a cruise ship or a prison guard and we want to diagnose TB because again it's not just you can go through different areas. So you are absolutely right that a number one early detection. I'm glad that you're sharing your personal story and I truly believe your wife too as well because some of these things I've been adding into the you know system. Uh but again uh we're going to talk about validity accuracy at a later point. 100% agree with your point that things may have changed if you have
access to more technology and you would personally be persuaded
to do early testing.
Edward Marx:
So I'm going to give you two real examples now. I mean that was a real example that that was uh personally in the past. I give you going forward. So, I noticed in my annual physical exam, which was July, Mhm. that I had a marker for liver that seemed to be going up. And u and so my PCP, she's not concerned, but I having gone through that prostate process, I said, I want to do another lab a month later. And so I saw an increase. I did another lab a month later. She's like,
I'm not concerned. Now it's at the top limit. Um, I'm like, "No, I've been down this road before." I put it in to, you know, my AI and it's like, "You need to see a nephrologist. You need to go take care of this." So, I I contact the nephrologist. It's December before my appointment. Do you think I'm going to wait to December when everything is telling me, "Hey, go get
this checked out." I'm not. So, so that's another example where uh traditional medicine best practice. I can't get access and I'm going to get sick. All right. I'm going to have cancer or something. So I'm not
Elise Victor:
I think we are looking in isolation at these studies and they are not necessarily representative of real world in terms of if we're you know if there's a a patient set or a data set um there's
bias built into that when we try to duplicate that I don't know that it can scale across the way that it's necessarily represented in the media, right? Um we've seen this time and again where uh you know something is proven effective or we have a high percentage of you know efficacy and then when we bring it elsewhere there are a lot of factors that were not considered right um just so many variables that I think being able to really take this and fulfill that vision that I think a lot of people have when they're reading you know articles like this and getting excited about about it is uh I think we're a little far off from that.
Edward Marx:
Another reason why we haven't experienced the full potential of AI and other digital capabilities is the payment system is a lagard. And as long as you have that gap, that's another
gap, right? As long as you have that gap that exists, it's going to growth for all these amazing things that do the right thing for for for people. So that's one thing that has to be looked at. So yes, I would receive this as a member of the seauite or as a board member of a couple of health systems and you would say wow we got to do this but again there's going to be this review to
the bottom line right how does this impact revenue it's a sad thing but in reality and so that all have to be carefully scrutinized so as we look at this from a clinical point of view and a patient and clinician experience point of view, we also have to look at it from a financial lens
Dr. Harvey Castro:
A tool like this now there's two issues one when you look at the study the the cost is really high and I think it's just because of the uh the token cost the the information that they're having to to spend on but that's going to change with time and and I don't think that time's going to take long. So, put that putting that aside. If that cost is low, then I see this as reducing um our
expenses.
Um there's two points. Ed mentioned this. If our EMR is really well integrated to the point where I have all that information, and it should be, then there's one thing I don't have to order tests. There's so many times I get patients, I'm like, "Hey doc, I had these labs done literally last week. Why are you doing them again?" Some of those labs I have to redo but maybe 80% I don't.
Dr. Kianor Shah:
Out of that group you know we started the doctor movement about um 15 13, 14 years ago and um today it's uh spanning about 163 countries. The idea is to bring uh doctors together and um write the standards and governments and advocacy and policy and things of that sort for the AI industry to create some kind of a boundary and guidelines for our colleagues. Out of these rooms come the ideas to put an event together.
Every other year we do a doctor's world gala in Italy where it all started with them Romans there. And then then people ask me you know you call it the divine tool and, yeah, I call AI a divine tool for us because it can make life a lot easier for us in many ways. So that's how we got here.
Dr. Junaid Kalia:
Amazing story and again people see that that well this conference came about as
he suggested Dr. Shah it took 15 to 20 years and
Dr. Kianor Shah:
with predictive analysis now dentists are going to be your best friends. So uh dentists and medical doctors really need to integrate now and create a much better it's our duty as doctors to utilize the tools that are available in the marketplace to improve the quality of patient uh uh life uh regardless of our personal opinions and lack or lack of action thereof. You have to seek uh these solutions. Now the medical doctors know things that we don't know and we know things that you guys don't know. So the purpose of this event is to come together, join arms, create a be better, more synchronized environment and figure out this behemoth that's possibly smarter than anything we have seen in human history uh uh before it outmaneuvers us. And there's
going to be uh all sorts of different um programs and and other things going on other rooms that are not just clinical. For example, just if you ask 10 doctors, we all live the same lives. We got to get out of our silos, meet and start uh taking back what uh is our industry. So, uh there's going to be a lot of ideas, a lot of capital, a lot of bold ideas. Hence, 100 speakers, three days, uh high
level networking and it needs to happen uh because no one else is doing it. The bridge between medicine and dentistry and across the board of healthcare. That's why we're doing this
Dr. Harvey Castro:
Today, you may judge AI and say it's crap, but make sure that you are using the best AI out there. Test it out so that when you judge, you're judging from the best model that's out there.
Edward Marx:
And what it really is going to take is courageous leadership, right? Because
we've identified even today in this episode, we identified three or four
major blockers that it would be easy for any one of us to say, "Yes, write the
thing for the patients, but man, it's too hard." And that's what most people
do. I'm telling you, most people in positions of leadership, they throw their hands up in the air. They say, "Well, I would do this if I could and I can't because I'm limited by all these different things that we touched on today." But it's a bunch of BS, right? We we know it. I know the four of us know it. You got to go out there and make stuff happen. You got to be a courageous leader. And I think that's going to be a common theme that we're gonna keep having to come back to. It's like take these ideas and make something happen. Work with founders. Take risks. Don't worry about your freaking job. You got to do the right thing for people. And if we had more of that sort of crazy leadership and didn't lack as much, I think we'd be way ahead. So, let's go
all go out there and just do the right thing. We got the technology. Technology
is not the issue. The brilliant people doing brilliant things. We just got to make it happen from a leadership perspective.
Dr. Kianor Shah:
AI is not going to take our jobs.
There's new industries that are going to be created. AI which are going to create more jobs. There will be a gap and it's going to plateau out the opportunities less 3 to 5 years which means just like the internet boom and the cell phone boom and all those things that we saw come across in our lifetimes. This is another boom and there's going to be a bust. And when the time comes and it all levels out and the opportunities disappear, all those pessimists are going to be uh you know when you look at the internet, you drop the internet today, they couldn't go back to the quality of life of the 60s. Um so uh uh
AI is here to stay. Those smart ones are going to use it to uh to out compete the the ones that are sitting around and and are scared or waiting or pessimistic about the situation. It's the hottest topic out there. It is here to stay. Next three five years we're going to create the first trillionaires in the world that are going to come out knowing how to utilize AI to improve qualities um which we have never had before. So yes, that assessment is about right spot.
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Dr. Junaid Kalia, Neurocritical Care Specialist & Founder of Savelife.AI™