Health Podcast Library
Episode 244

Training Doctors for the Next 40 Years | Stanford Medical School Dean Dr. Lloyd Minor

Aug 17, 2026
39:47

Episode Description

It's back-to-school szn, and while some kids are stressing over earlier wake-ups, this year's incoming medical students have a bigger question to answer: how do you train for a career that could still have you practicing medicine in the 2070s, when the tools of medicine are changing so rapidly?

For our back-to-school episode, we sat down with Stanford University School of Medicine Dean Dr. Lloyd Minor to talk about how AI is already reshaping what future doctors learn and how they're taught, as well as what's still not working in American healthcare.

We cover:

  • What medical students are actually being taught about AI, and where Stanford still draws the line
  • Why Stanford's tumor boards no longer start with humans
  • The surprising way Dr. Minor thinks AI could level the playing field in healthcare access
  • Why the same AI tools helping patients feel more informed are also making them more anxious
  • The counterintuitive reason new medical technology gets more expensive before it gets cheaper
  • What's still standing in the way of a vision for precision medicine that's been decades in the making


About our guest:

Lloyd B. Minor, MD, is a scientist, surgeon, and academic leader. He is the Carl and Elizabeth Naumann Dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine and Vice President for Medical Affairs at Stanford University. Dr. Minor also is a professor of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery and a professor of Bioengineering and of Neurobiology, by courtesy, at Stanford University.

As dean, Dr. Minor has had an integral role in setting strategy for the clinical enterprise of Stanford Medicine, an academic medical center that includes the Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Health Care, and Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. With his leadership, Stanford Medicine leads the biomedical revolution in Precision Health. His book, “Discovering Precision Health,” describes this shift to more preventive, personalized health care and highlights how biomedical advances are dramatically improving our ability to treat and cure complex diseases. In 2021, Dr. Minor articulated and began realizing a bold vision to transform the future of life sciences at Stanford University and beyond – a multi-decade journey enabled by Precision Health.

In August 2023, Dr. Minor was appointed Vice President for Medical Affairs to lead all matters related to health and medicine at Stanford University.

Before Stanford, Dr. Minor was provost and senior vice president for academic affairs of Johns Hopkins University. Prior to this appointment in 2009, Dr. Minor served as the Andelot Professor and director (chair) of the Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and otolaryngologist-in-chief of The Johns Hopkins Hospital.

With more than 160 published articles and chapters, Dr. Minor is an expert in balance and inner ear disorders perhaps best known for discovering superior canal dehiscence syndrome, a debilitating disorder characterized by sound- or pressure-induced dizziness. He subsequently developed a surgical procedure that corrects the problem and alleviates symptoms.

In 2012, Dr. Minor was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

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