DOCSF 2026: DOCSF Science Keynote

Welcome to the DOCSF 2026 podcast series, recorded live in San Francisco.

Dr. Stefano Bini, DOCSF founder and chair, looks back to the first meeting in 2016 and ahead to what comes next. He highlights the new DOCSF Science day, co-organized with JBJS, which drew nearly 100 abstracts, and the two themes that will carry DOCSF into 2027: innovating at scale /scaling innovation, and the promise of agentic AI and automation.

From Dr. Vail’s Keynote

Dr. Thomas Vail, professor emeritus and 16-year chair of Orthopedic Surgery at UCSF, argues that musculoskeletal care should lead the merger of digital technology and health, not trail it.

He starts by making the case that the musculoskeletal system drives systemic health, from muscle's endocrine role to the link between osteoarthritis and diabetes. Then he sets adoption against funding: per Vail, 80% of US physicians now use AI, yet NIAMS receives about $700 million of a $47 billion NIH budget.

Vail closes with three tiers of opportunity, running from tools clinicians already use to the one he considers the most complex and the most impactful. He ends on who has to own the responsibility for getting it right.