Nvidia's vision for the future places AI in every corner, crack and gap in the healthcare industry. But it may not be easy, especially in the US.
The graphical processing unit, Nvidia's groundbreaking chip that enables most of today's AI, is a powerful tool. However, it cannot correct outdated systems, regulations made in the paper age, and privacy concerns from both physicians and patients.
Still, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has become famous for what he calls a “Zero-Billion Dollar Market,” where he can build technology from scratch and educate the industry it fits into. In Healthcare, the job falls into the Nvidia General Manager of Healthcare at Kimberly Powell.
Business Insider spoke to Powell about the reality of integrating AI into the sometimes incompatible healthcare industry. Powell has worked for Nvidia for 17 years and healthcare is one of the company's biggest opposition, she said.
This Q&A has been edited for clarity and length.
What is one area in the healthcare industry that you spend a lot of time on?
One of the entry points for healthcare was medical imaging. When you go to see your doctor, you usually have some kind of symptoms. And the first thing that happens is that you are imaged – they're going to look for something.
Radiology is a very step-by-step process. Set up your machine, capture the appropriate images and make sure the quality is good. Can I do an analysis before reaching the radiologist? Should I circle this?
So you can add AI to these bundles of stages to improve your overall workflow.
Learn more about Nvidia's full stack and you'll notice a partner in a niche supercomputer space and growing alongside Nvidia. Healthcare companies feel they are under the radar, but are there any companies that are very important for AI?
I think GE is one of them. That's why we partner with them. Diagnostic imaging is a $50 billion industry offering only one-third of the population. If it's more autonomous, it could probably help the whole population and be triple sized.
Some of these companies were 100 years old. They're used to selling hardware. Their big transformation over the past decade that they have worked with has been not just a way to read sensor data, but rather to allow another person to read it, but to enhance their sensor data to see more. Remove it, enhance it, or add an ai on it.
Another company that most people don't know is Iqvia.
IQVIA is a clinical research company. For decades, we have been conducting clinical trial research for the pharmaceutical industry.
This means they are working within the healthcare system. Because you are doing the exam, you are collecting all the information about the patients and their electronic health records, their lab, their imaging, what they ate for breakfast, all that stuff.
They essentially created a data network because they serve 10 seconds of 1000 customers. So they now have a data network that suddenly Agent AI (Intelligence Layer) can place on it to start offering services.
What they did in the past is getting data and sold it to A Company A, Company B, and Company C, as A, B, and C took it in-house, built their own intelligence layer on top, replicate the wheel in all one and do it for different purposes.
They now have the opportunity to take a very pristine dataset and overlay the intelligence layer on top of it. IQVIA is like SAP and ServiceNow in the healthcare industry.
Many examples of AI in healthcare sound like they can change costs. Imaging should be billed very differently if it is very ubiquitous in the way you describe it. Do you think about how costs will change? That feels like a pretty fundamental change.
It is a fundamental change, taking fundamental changes across a very complex economic system.
For example, if you catch some level of cancer at stage 1 and stage 4, they are preventable and there is a lot of conclusive evidence that the cost of the system will change dramatically.
But we are still not in the “keeping healthy” mode, and very “treating illnesses.” If there is a system that can catch things before, it should create a calculation that makes a lot of sense.
I wonder if they spend their time talking to ordinary people about AI and healthcare.
Yes, I want to know how to interpret people as listening to their doctors. Because on the one hand I'm thinking about all these privacy concerns, and on the other hand, when I explain the benefits they realize, “Oh, my God, that will change the experience forever.” It really seems invasive at times.
But they don't know about the 55 positive byproducts of AI in the system. I live mostly and breathe health care. So I'm always talking about it.
For example, I was talking to my 9-year-old daughter and she said, “Why do you want the robot to do that?” and that, “Just “If the robot can be there to help them, just as you're tired at night and the handwriting gets worse, as well, the surgeon is tired too.” These are the conversations I have. We are all patients, right?
