Building the Rails: The Systems That Power Innovation | Live @ Civic Health Forum
Episode Description
Public health has an image problem. It rarely shows up until something goes wrong, which makes it one of the hardest things to fund and one of the easiest to underinvest in. This episode gets specific about what that underinvestment actually costs, and what becomes possible when AI closes the gap instead.
Host Jay Varma, MD (SVP and CMO of The Fedcap Group), sat down with Susan Monarez, PhD (former Director, CDC; founding leader, ARPA-H), Girish Nadkarni, MD, MPH (Chief AI Officer, Mount Sinai Health System), and Nirav Shah, MD (Stanford University; founder, Civic Stratum), for a conversation recorded live at Civic Health Forum.
Highlights include:
Why every dollar spent on public health returns an estimated $5.60 in avoided health care costs, and why New York State's Medicaid program turned a $1 investment in water fluoridation into $14 in saved dental bills for kids.
How Mount Sinai is using AI to diagnose amyloidosis, a heart condition disproportionately affecting Black and Hispanic Americans, straight from an ECG, and what it means for a single doctor to safely oversee a panel of a thousand patients instead of two hundred.
The disease surveillance infrastructure crisis most people have never heard of: 23 states losing funding to report outbreak data, and the open source, AI-powered replacement Nirav Shah's team quietly built and is now scaling state by state.
What each guest would do with a hypothetical 30 to 40 billion dollars a year in new philanthropic capital aimed at prevention.
StartUp Health community members had a seat in the room for this conversation. Audio quality may vary due to live recording. Join the community to attend virtual and in-person events like this live, bring your own questions to the stage, and get access to full recordings of sessions if you miss them.
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