Big Picture Medicine

How can we design AI systems which remove human bias — rather than perpetuate it? Ziad Obermeyer is Associate Professor and Blue Cross of California Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Berkeley School of Public Health where he researchers and teaches on the intersection of machine learning and healthcare. Some of his most interesting research focuses on algorithmic bias, and how we can better build AI systems which avoid perpetuating and falling into these traps. We talk about his fascinating story, how he created an AI algorithm which actually reduced bias and superseded human performance and some of the things he’s learnt along the way. I hope you enjoy. Prof Obermeyer's new initiative: Nightingale Open Source. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

What does it take to become a great clinical academic? Neil Sebire is a Professor of Pathology at the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) which is the country’s leading children’s research hospital as well as the Chief Clinical Data Officer at Health Data Research UK He has loads and loads of other accolades including over 700 published papers, a H index of 88 and 32,000 citations so it’s always a privilege to get his thoughts. This is the third podcast interview I’ve done with him. In Episode 2 of this podcast we talked about his story and informatics, then in Episode 17 we talked about how to be more effective at what you do as a Clinical Academic. This is a continuation of that last episode — in which I ask more about how to become a great Clinical Academic, how to make better decisions, how to play the long game, what’s worth pursuing and what’s best to ignore and lots more. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Yusuf Sherwani is the Co-founder and CEO of QuitGenius — a digital clinic for addiction. QuitGenius started life as a smoking cessation app, which Yusuf and his Co-founders created whilst at Imperial College Medical School. They have since expanded to the US and have raised just under $80M dollars. We talk about the overnight success, and how it wasn’t really overnight. We talk a lot about decision making and useful mental models as a healthtech founder, and some of Yusuf’s failures and how he dealt with them. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Dr Ann Taylor studied at Harvard Medical School, practiced as an Endocrinologist at Mass General Hospital before shifting over to Pharma — now sitting as AstraZeneca’s Chief Medical Officer. This episode's full of wisdom, we talk about being a generalist vs a specialist at life, what she learned from leaving Medicine and entering Pharma and her tips for medics who want to do great things outside of the clinic. I hope you enjoy.

Colin Espie is Professor of Sleep Medicine at Oxford University as well as Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Big Health. With insomnia, there are two mainstays of treatment. The first is medication or drugs, and the second is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (or CBT). CBT has traditionally required face-to-face treatment from a psychologist, and can be difficult to access for patients in a constrained health service. Far easier, the criticism goes, to just give someone a pill. Fundamentally, the problem is that prescription drugs are very scalable and relatively cheap. Face-to-face CBT on the other hand, is expensive and doesn’t scale well. But new approaches package CBT into a digital platform or app — making it infinitely more scalable — and opening it up to many more patients. Big Health are creators of a digital CBT program called Sleepio. Sleepio boasts the largest evidence base in digital mental health with 13 randomised controlled trials. Its parent company: Big Health has raised over $50M in funding. We talk about digital therapy for sleep, as well as some debate about whether digital therapeutics require the same evidence as traditional medications. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Cyndi Williams is the Co-founder and CEO of Quin; a digital therapeutic for type 1 diabetes. The app provides personalised, data-led support for insulin dosing decisions, based on physiological and behavioural factors. Quin have raised £3.6 million pounds to date. We talk about the process of building Quin, the joys and tribulations of fundraising, crowdfunding and the life of a CEO. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Secrets, in Medicine, are a crime against humanity. Dr Marcus Baw holds an unusual career as a GP, Emergency Physician and health hacker. He makes a controversial claim: That we have an ethical duty to openly share our technological innovation — and anything short of this is a crime against humanity. Links from Marcus Digital Health Networks (CCIOs, CIOs, CSOs, Caldicott Guardians, Clinicians Who Code and more) discourse.digitalhealth.net Open Health Hub - completely open discussion of all things open sourcey in healthcare https://openhealthhub.org/ My OSITOWFM blog https://medium.com/@marcus_baw/open-source-is-the-only-way-for-medicine-9e698de0447e "Royal Colleges 3.0" https://marcus-baw.medium.com/royal-colleges-3-0-best-practice-as-code-7065bce821a7 Faculty of Clinical Informatics https://facultyofclinicalinformatics.org.uk/ RCGP Health Informatics Group (for GPs who are RCGP members only) - GP IT specialism https://hig.primary-care.org.uk Chamberlen Forceps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstetrical_forceps#History Me on Twitter https://twitter.com/marcus_baw Marcus's Website: https://pacharanero.github.io You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Professor Sir John Burn is Professor of Clinical Genetics at Newcastle University, a Non-Executive Director of NHS England and Vice Chairman of QuantumDx. His story is fascinating and slightly unusual — because he began life from humble beginnings in a small village in the North East of England. We talk about meritocracy, how to be a showman and why business and clinical academia are really very similar. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

What's the biggest existential threat to the BMJ? Dr Fiona Godlee is the Editor-in-Chief of the British Medical Journal and is an Executive Director of the BMJ Company. She trained as a General Physician in Cambridge and London, before joining the BMJ as an Editorial Registrar. Dr Godlee is incredibly interesting and forthcoming with the realities of running a medical journal — we talk about how the BMJ is not just a medical journal but a societal intervention, existential threats to the BMJ, the future vision and what Dr Godlee’s learned about leadership on her journey. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

How do you capitalise on a problem spanning 5% of Google searches? Daniel Nathrath is the Co-founder and CEO of Ada Health; a self-assessment health app for patients. Ada has 10 million users, 250,000 5-star ratings and they’ve raised just shy of $100M. They’ve been backed by Philip Schindler (Google’s Chief Business Officer_ and William Tunstall-Pedoe; who created Amazon Alexa. We discuss some of the details behind starting Ada and its initial reception from doctors, some of its successes and future direction and finally we talk about Daniel’s leadership philosophy and some of the things he’s learnt as Ada’s grown. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io