I have been arguing for years that the combination of wearables, electronic medical records and AI is the fastest and most humane way to reduce patient suffering and lower the cost of healthcare, which in the case of the United States is unsustainably high. I explained this a few weeks ago in a piece about Microsoft’s “medical superintelligence” and the fundamental role of state-run health services in guaranteeing abundant, universal and well-protected data.
Which is why the latest announcement from the White House is so disturbing: a “patient-centered healthcare ecosystem” piloted by the Trump administration under the auspices of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), with the enthusiastic support of Palantir, Amazon, Apple, Google, OpenAI, et al. The plan promises to “break down digital walls”, implement modern identity credentials and offer AI applications that “kill the clipboard” and help manage diseases such as diabetes, obesity, etc.
More than sixty technology companies are willing to “dump” all our medical records on private servers, under…