Faces of Digital Health

AI ethicist Jess Morley: these chatbots are giving medical advice — so regulate them as medical devices.

Part of The Agentic Patient, a Faces of Digital Health series on how patients actually use AI — which tools, which prompts, which safeguards. In this episode, host Tjaša Zajc sits down with Dr Jess Morley, Associate Research Scientist at the Yale Digital Ethics Center and a former AI subject-matter expert at the UK Department of Health and Social Care, for a clear-eyed account of where health AI is going wrong — and how to use it well anyway.

Morley argues we systematically overestimate what these tools can do and underestimate the harm. She makes the case for "skeptical optimism," explains why bioethics principles built for one-to-one care break down against many-to-many AI harms, and reframes ambient scribes as inference engines rather than transcription services — with real consequences for coding, billing and patient records. Then she gets practical: the guardrails, prompts and habits patients (and clinicians) can use today.

Guest: Dr Jessica Morley — Associate Research Scientist, Yale Digital Ethics Center; formerly UK Department of Health and Social Care and the Bennett Institute, University of Oxford.

What the conversation covers:
- Why "skeptically optimistic" is the honest position on health AI
- AI adoption as "a hammer looking for nails" — and what needs-led design would look like instead
- OpenEvidence, EU rules and the question of regulatory capture
- The DeepMind–Royal Free case and why law alone isn't enough
- Beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, justice — and where they fail for AI
- Ambient AI scribes, miscoding, billing inflation and phantom tests
- Paid vs free models and the widening access gap
- The "ask why" rule and knowing when to walk away from a chatbot
- Red-teaming your own assumptions and playing models off each other
- Building a personal "harness" with skills so AI works from your history
- The last-mile problem and the case for regulating LLMs as medical devices
- Whether AI is narrowing how clinicians think

Chapters:

02:50 — Intro: The Agentic Patient and the case for skeptical optimism
05:52 — "A hammer looking for nails": adoption pressure without a plan
07:25 — OpenEvidence, EU rules and regulatory capture
09:42 — The DeepMind–Royal Free lesson: why law needs ethics
13:29 — The bioethics principles and what they were built to do
19:40 — Autonomy, consent and the ambient-scribe problem
21:49 — Scribes as inference engines: miscoding, fraud and phantom tests
29:06 — Paid vs free models and the access gap
33:25 — Using AI safely: the "ask why" rule
37:38 — Knowing when to walk away: engagement design and degradation
44:58 — Red-teaming and playing models off each other
49:00 — Harnesses and skills: making the model work for you
51:38 — The last-mile problem and regulating AI as a medical device
58:00 — Does AI narrow the clinician's mind?

The Agentic Patient series: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/agentic-patient-blog
Website: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com
Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/faces-of-digital-health

98% of patients welcome AI in their care — and still want a human in charge.
That tension ran through the OECD and Spanish Ministry of Health conference on scaling AI in health (Madrid, late May 2026), and it frames this episode of Faces of Digital Health. Out of 38 OECD countries, only seven have a formal AI strategy and just over a tenth run workforce upskilling programmes — the ambition is outrunning the institutions meant to govern it. Host Tjaša Zajc brings together voices from across the conference to ask what actually has to change: regulation, trust, who gets a seat at the table, and the parts of the agenda nobody is funding.
Featuring:
- Eric Sutherland — Senior Economist, OECD
- Aferdita Bytyqi — Executive Director & Founding Partner, Digital Transformations for Health Lab (DTH-Lab)
- Erza Selmani — Research Fellow, DTH-Lab
- Valentina Strammiello — Executive Director, European Patients Forum (EPF)
- Dr Ricardo Baptista Leite — CEO, HealthAI (the Global Agency for Responsible AI in Health)
- Dr Persephone Doupi — Senior Medical Officer, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare; President, European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI)
What the conversation covers:
- Why trust — not capability — is the binding constraint on health AI adoption
- The OECD readiness gap: AI strategies, HTA frameworks and workforce upskilling
- How patients really feel about AI: consent forms, transparency, and keeping clinicians central
- Why youth health and wellbeing keep getting left out of AI governance frameworks
- Five recommendations to make the EU AI Act work for health and competitiveness
- Coordinating the EU AI Act, MDR/IVDR and the European Health Data Space
- Health technology assessment and reimbursement as the real barriers to scale
- AI literacy and prevention: the most underweighted lever in the room

Chapters:
0:10 — Welcome: AI in Health & the 2026 OECD Conference in Madrid

0:25 — Key Stats: Only 7 of 38 OECD Countries Have a Formal AI Strategy

2:10 — Eric Sutherland (OECD): We're Not Using Data as Effectively as We Could

3:11 — Afrodita & Erza (DTH Lab): Youth Health Is Missing from AI Governance Frameworks

5:12 — Valentina Stramello (EPF): 98% of Patients Are Positive About AI, But Trust Requires Transparency

7:14 — Dr. Ricardo Baptista Leite (Health AI): 5 Recommendations to Fix EU AI Policy for Health

10:53 — Persephone Doupi (EFMI): We Must Prioritize AI Literacy and Shift Healthcare Toward Prevention

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🎧 Listen: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com
📩 Newsletter (incl. written OECD conference summary): https://fodh.substack.com
💼 LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/12594967/
🌐 Site: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com
#DigitalHealth #HealthAI #AIinHealthcare #HealthPolicy #EUAIAct #EHDS #ResponsibleAI #PatientVoice #HealthTechAssessment #HealthTech

Doctors are using ChatGPT in clinic right now — and some of them don't care about privacy. Three operators on what that means for healthcare AI.

Recorded live at health.tech in Basel, this panel from Faces of Digital Health unpacks the convergence reshaping clinical software: ambient AI scribes, agentic AI in healthcare, on-device LLMs, and the regulatory drag (MDR, EU AI Act, EHDS) that is widening the gap between what clinicians actually use and what hospitals are allowed to buy.

Host Tjaša Zajc is joined by:

Jonathan Bringas — CEO & Founder, Lapsi Health (Kaiku: FDA-cleared AI stethoscope, ambient scribe and clinical assistant in one device)

Blaž Triglav — CEO, Mediately (drug information platform, 1M+ HCPs across Europe)

Amanda Herbrand — Clinical data modelling consultant, formerly University Hospital Basel

What the conversation covers:
— Why EHR data fragmentation is the precondition AI hasn't solved
— Shadow AI: why clinicians trust ChatGPT more than enterprise tools (and the agency hypothesis behind it)
— The convergence of stethoscopes, scribes, drug information and decision support into one workflow layer
— ROI in healthcare AI: financial, time, clinical accuracy — and Herbrand's fourth dimension, user satisfaction
— "Doctors were the original vibe coders": the 2,000 Excel spreadsheets running European hospitals
— Why FDA-cleared beats MDR in 2026 sales cycles, and what Chile's regulatory minimalism tells us
— The asymmetry that will break European medtech: applicants using AI to build, regulators forbidden from using AI to assess
— On-device AI, ambient computing, AGI in clinical workflows — and the de-skilling risk no one wants to discuss

⏱ Chapters

00:00 — Opening: AI agents, vibe coding, and what doctors actually want
01:30 — Data fragmentation: the precondition AI hasn't solved (Amanda Herbrand)
02:30 — Keiku: collapsing stethoscope, scribe and assistant into one device
05:15 — The convergence reshaping healthcare AI — and the shadow AI in clinic
07:30 — Why doctors trust ChatGPT more than enterprise tools: the agency hypothesis
10:30 — ROI: financial, time, clinical accuracy — and Herbrand's fourth dimension
15:30 — Choosing solutions: modular requirements and FDA-cleared moats
19:30 — EHDS and the missing connector in European standardisation
21:00 — "Doctors were the original vibe coders": the 2,000 spreadsheet problem
24:30 — The two-speed world: regulated medicine vs the Wild West
28:00 — Why Chile's regulatory minimalism beats Europe's MDR
30:30 — Agentic AI vs regulators: the asymmetry that will break European medtech
33:30 — On-device AI, AGI, and the deskilling no one wants to discuss

🎧 View the video podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fciFwMmIfRc&t=174s
📩 Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com
🔗 LinkedIn:   / dashboard  
🌐 facesofdigitalhealth.com

#HealthcareAI #DigitalHealth #AmbientAI #AgenticAI #ClinicalAI #EHR #EHDS #MedTech #HealthTech

Most conversations about agentic AI in healthcare get stuck on capability. This one is about the gap between capability and deployment — and what closes it.

Aashima Gupta, Global Director of Healthcare Strategy and Solutions at Google Cloud, argues that healthcare's bottleneck isn't vision; it's courage. The processes are documented poorly or not at all, AI fluency programs reach a fraction of employees who want them, and most enterprises are running agents without the harnesses — grounding, evaluation, red-teaming — that production deployment actually requires. Meanwhile patients navigate three different "clock speeds" (annual insurance cycles, shifting provider rosters, Medicare pricing) that bear no relation to the timeline of their own health.

We cover the European vs US deployment posture, the difference between agents-with-agency and rule-based AI, why Highmark's library of one million internal prompts matters, Google Cloud's full-stack efficiency play (TPU Ironwood, Gemini, the 40% data-centre electricity reduction DeepMind delivered years ago), and the multi-agent "harnesses" — including the red/blue/green team architecture — that are starting to make production-grade healthcare AI plausible.

Video: https://youtu.be/rLtaxQLgCg0?si=JDP6kK97_tYsFoSb

Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/

Agentic Patient Series: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/agentic-patient-blog

The Agentic Patient is here — and most healthcare systems don't have a plan for it. In this special reverse-role episode of Faces of Digital Health, Eric Sutherland interviews host Tjaša Zajc about what a year of using AI through her own chronic illness has actually taught her about patients, doctors, and the future of healthcare AI.

200 million people will ask ChatGPT a health question this week. The question is no longer whether patients will use AI to navigate their care — it's how to help them do it well, without harm, and in productive partnership with their clinicians.

In this episode:
- Why "patients know best" breaks down for chronic patients
- The three archetypes AI is creating: minimizers, cyberchondriacs, and informed collaborators
- What happens when doctors dismiss patients who use AI
- A two-model verification method for cross-checking medical AI advice
- Why "digital literacy" is the wrong name for the most important skill in modern healthcare
- Two prompts that genuinely change what AI gives you back
- What health ministries should actually do — and why we shouldn't offload patient AI education to doctors

⏱ CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro & reverse-role experiment
01:00 Eric Sutherland: "a data guy with personality"
01:36 A year as a chronic patient using AI
02:50 Same prompt, different LLMs — the trust problem
04:30 How The Agentic Patient series was born
06:00 Three patient archetypes
09:00 When doctors dismiss AI, patients start hiding
12:30 Dale Atkinson, HIMSS Europe, and data outside the clinic
13:30 200M weekly ChatGPT health queries — who's accountable?
15:30 The two-model cross-verification method
17:00 Making 7-minute appointments work with AI
19:30 Finland's Elements of AI — a model for healthcare
22:00 Why chronic patients may not know best
24:30 Five minutes with a health minister
27:00 Two prompts that change AI outputs
30:00 The agentic patient is a survivor, not a tech enthusiast

🎙 ABOUT THE AGENTIC PATIENT
The Agentic Patient is a series under Faces of Digital Health exploring how patients and clinicians are actually using AI in healthcare — the wins, the harms, and the best practices emerging across cancer care, chronic disease, and primary care.

🔗 LINKS
Newsletter: https://fodh.substack.com/p/the-agentic-patients-are-here
More episodes: https://www.facesofdigitalhealth.com/agentic-patient-blog
Tjaša Zajc on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tjasazajc/
Eric Sutherland on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esutherland272/?skipRedirect=true

#AgenticPatient #AIinHealthcare #DigitalHealth #FacesOfDigitalHealth #HealthcareAI #ChatGPT #PatientEmpowerment #ChronicIllness #AIliteracy #MedicalAI #PatientAdvocacy #DigitalTransformation