Join Microsoft’s Peter Lee on a journey to discover how AI is impacting healthcare and what it means for the future of medicine.
In November 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT kick-started a new era in AI. This was followed less than a half year later by the release of GPT-4. In the months leading up to GPT-4’s public release, Peter Lee, president of Microsoft Research, cowrote The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond, a book full of optimism for the potential of advanced AI models to transform the world of healthcare. What has happened since? In this special Microsoft Research Podcast series, Lee revisits the book, exploring how patients, providers, and other medical professionals are experiencing and using generative AI today while examining what he and his coauthors got right—and what they didn’t foresee.
“’I think that Zak and his mother deserve better than that.’ I was being scolded. And while I’ve been scolded plenty in my life, for the first time it wasn’t a person scolding me; it was an artificial intelligence system.”
– Peter Lee, “Chapter 1: First Contact,” The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond
Episodes
The AI Revolution in Medicine, Revisited: An Introduction
Peter Lee talks about his early encounters with GPT-4, when the AI model was still in secret development with OpenAI, and the range of emotions he cycled through as he came to understand the new technology better. The emergence of generative AI has created a “new world,” Lee says, one he is eager to investigate with the aim of discovering the technology’s impact so far and what it means for the future of healthcare and medicine.
Episode 1 | The reality of generative AI in the clinic
Dr. Christopher Longhurst, Dr. Sara Murray | March 20, 2025
UC San Diego Health’s Dr. Christopher Longhurst and UC San Francisco Health’s Dr. Sara Murray explore how generative AI is changing patient care, clinical workflows, and decision-making and how they envision the technology impacting the future of healthcare.
Guests
Dr. Sara Murray (opens in new tab)
Dr. Sara Murray is the chief health AI officer at UC San Francisco Health and an associate professor of clinical medicine.
Dr. Christopher Longhurst (opens in new tab)
Dr. Christopher Longhurst is the chief clinical and innovation officer at UC San Diego Health and a professor of medicine and pediatrics.
Episode 2 | Real-world healthcare AI development and deployment—at scale
Dr. Matthew Lungren, Seth Hain | April 3, 2025
Microsoft’s Dr. Matthew Lungren and Epic’s Seth Hain discuss the challenges and opportunities of leveraging generative AI for enhanced patient care and improved clinical documentation and recordkeeping at scale—plus what’s next for the technology in the field.
Guests
Dr. Matthew Lungren
Dr. Matthew Lungren is the chief scientific officer at Microsoft Health and Life Sciences, where he focuses on translating cutting-edge technology into innovative healthcare applications.
Seth Hain (opens in new tab)
Seth Hain is the senior vice president of R&D at the healthcare software company Epic. He focuses on AI, analytics, and more across the company’s healthcare applications.
Episode 3 | Empowering patients and healthcare consumers in the age of generative AI
Dave deBronkart, Christina Farr | April 17, 2025
Evangelist for patient empowerment Dave deBronkart and Manatt Heath’s Christina Farr discuss how generative AI is redefining healthcare by empowering patients, challenging traditional care models, and creating new opportunities for innovation and collaboration.
Guests
Dave deBronkart (opens in new tab)
Dave deBronkart, known online as “e-Patient Dave,” is author of the book Let Patients Help! and one of the world’s leading advocates for patient empowerment.
Christina Farr (opens in new tab)
Christina Farr is a managing director at the consulting firm Manatt. She also runs a newsletter called Second Opinion and a fund called Scrub Capital.
Episode 4 | Laws, norms, and ethics for AI in health
Laura Adams, Vardit Ravitsky, Dr. Roxana Daneshjou | May 1, 2025
Healthcare experts Laura Adams, Vardit Ravitsky, and Dr. Roxana Daneshjou discuss responsible AI implementation in medicine, examining governance approaches, shifting patient-provider relationships, and the identification of bias to ensure equitable deployment.
Guests
Laura Adams (opens in new tab)
Laura Adams is a senior advisor at the National Academy of Medicine, where she leads the Artificial Intelligence Code of Conduct national initiative.
Vardit Ravitsky (opens in new tab)
Vardit Ravitsky is president of The Hastings Center for Bioethics, a bioethics research institute, and is a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Roxana Daneshjou (opens in new tab)
Dr. Roxana Daneshjou is a dermatologist and an assistant professor of biomedical data science and dermatology at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Episode 5 | Coauthor roundtable: Reflecting on real world of doctors, developers, patients, and policymakers
Carey Goldberg, Dr. Zak Kohane | May 15, 2025
Peter Lee and his coauthors, Carey Goldberg and Dr. Zak Kohane, reflect on how generative AI is unfolding in real-world healthcare, drawing on earlier guest conversations to examine what’s working, what’s not, and what questions still remain.
Guests
Carey Goldberg (opens in new tab)
Carey Goldberg is a longtime medical and science journalist who has been on staff for The New York Times, Bloomberg News, and other news outlets.
Dr. Isaac Kohane (opens in new tab)
Dr. Isaac Kohane is the inaugural chair of Harvard’s Department of Biomedical Informatics and editor-in-chief for The New England Journal of Medicine AI.
Episode 6 | What AI’s impact on individuals means for the health workforce and industry
Ethan Mollick, Azeem Azhar | May 29, 2025
Ethan Mollick and Azeem Azhar, thought leaders at the forefront of AI’s influence on work, education, and society, discuss the impact of AI at the individual level and what that means for the healthcare workforce and the organizations and systems in medicine.
Guests
Ethan Mollick (opens in new tab)
Ethan Mollick is an associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and co-director of Wharton’s Generative AI Labs.
Azeem Azhar (opens in new tab)
Azeem Azhar is the founder of Exponential View, as well as an author and early-stage investor
Up next
Episode 7
Bill Gates, Sébastien Bubeck | June 12, 2025
Series contributors: Neeltje Berger, Tetiana Bukhinska, David Celis Garcia, Matt Corwine, Kristina Dodge, Chris Duryee, Ben Ericson, Kate Forster, Alyssa Hughes, Jake Knapp, Weishung Liu, Matthew McGinley, Amanda Melfi, Wil Morrill, Joe Plummer, Brenda Potts, Amber Tingle, Craig Tuschoff, and Katie Zoller.