Doctors demand tech. Nurses should too | Mary Varghese Presti, Microsoft

Mary Varghese Presti, Corporate Vice President and COO, Microsoft Health & Life Sciences, started her career as a pediatric nurse. She joins Christina Farr to talk about why she wants nurses to demand technology the way physicians do, and what AI has to prove before it's trusted on the clinical side. They get into why nurses have nobody to delegate to, Microsoft's work with Stanford on an agentic tumor board aimed at treatment decisions in days rather than weeks, and her pick between GLP-1s and AI at one, five and ten years.

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Join Christina for upcoming webinars:
10/8 - Why Are Hospitals Hiring Chief AI Officers? https://streamyard.com/watch/VjvVZiDN8ZMH
10/13 - Verifying AI in Medicine: Is Healthcare AI Actually Ready for Deployment? https://streamyard.com/watch/GwsSXwdikhMw
10/28 - Type 2 Diabetes & Cardiometabolic Care: Wearables, AI & GLP-1s https://streamyard.com/watch/uAuwCzUEJTCF
11/3 - Is It Finally the Moment for Alternative Plan Design? https://streamyard.com/watch/ereM3aB58XK4
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LINKS:
Microsoft Dragon Copilot: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/health-solutions/clinical-workflow/dragon-copilot
Healthcare Agent Orchestrator: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/healthcare/2025/05/19/developing-next-generation-cancer-care-management-with-multi-agent-orchestration/
"Nursing Is the Surefire New Path to American Prosperity.": https://www.asrn.org/journal-nursing/3467-nursing-is-the-surefire-new-path-to-american-prosperity.html
Lifers episode with Peter Lee: https://youtu.be/lxWYV1rNqR4

Chrissy Farr on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LiferswithChristinaFarr
Chrissy Farr on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cfarr/
Subscribe to the Second Opinion Newsletter: https://secondopinion.media/
Chrissy’s Book: The Storyteller's Advantage: https://www.chrissyfarr.com/books

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FOLLOW:
Mary:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryvarghese/
https://x.com/MaryVPresti

Chrissy:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinafarr/
https://x.com/chrissyfarr

Second Opinion Media:
https://www.instagram.com/second.opinion.media/
https://x.com/second_op_media

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TIMESTAMPS:
(00:00) Lead in
(00:32) Intro
(02:08) AI in healthcare hits scale
(03:40) Why nursing is the next frontier
(05:24) The LLM lightbulb moment
(07:35) From hype to pragmatism
(11:28) Nurses fear and job security
(15:02) Admin bloat and incentives
(18:24) Burnout and nursing documentation
(20:55) Agentic workflows at the bedside
(25:42) Caregiving and consumer copilots
(30:20) Learning to trust AI answers
(34:28) Clinical AI trust and regulation
(39:35) AI and expanding disease definitions
(44:22) How AI could reshape care teams
(51:41) One five ten year predictions
(52:45) Wrap