The Tech Trek The Real Bottleneck in Healthcare AI Is Data Access
Shahryar Qadri, CTO of OneImaging, joins me to unpack a hard truth about healthcare tech: the goal is not to remove humans, it is to give them more room to be human.
We talk about where cost “optimization” actually helps patients, why radiology is a perfect fit for AI but still held back by data access, and how better workflows can improve trust, speed, and outcomes without losing the human touch.
OneImaging sits in the radiology benefits space, helping members book imaging in a national network with more transparency and a high touch booking experience, while helping employers cut imaging costs significantly.
Key takeaways
• The “human touch” in healthcare is not going away, the better play is using tech to increase capacity so caregivers can spend more time being caregivers
• Cost optimization is not always about paying less for expertise, it is often about wasting less human time, improving trust, and removing friction around services
• Healthcare still runs on outdated plumbing in places you would not expect, including fax based workflows that slow everything down
• Radiology is one of the best real world use cases for AI, but the bigger blocker is getting access to imaging data in usable form, not model capability
• Your health data is already “there”, but it is not working for you yet. The next wave is tools that scan your longitudinal record and surface what to ask your doctor about, so you can be a stronger advocate for your own care
Timestamped highlights
• 00:36 What OneImaging actually does, and why “transparent imaging” is more than a pricing story
• 02:00 Why healthcare stays personal, and how tech should increase capacity instead of replacing care
• 03:36 The real definition of cost optimization, commodity versus service, and where trust matters
• 07:01 The surprising reality of imaging ops, why it still feels like 1998, and what gets digitized next
• 17:19 AI in radiology is real, but the data access and interoperability gap is the bottleneck
• 24:21 Your CDs are full of value, the problem is we do almost nothing with that data today
A line worth replaying
“These LLM models are the worst that they’ll ever be today. They’re only going to get better and better and better.”
Call to action
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