🚀 Mission View
A sharper perspective on this week's issue that matters at the intersection of health and AI.
Via Media. Latin for the middle road.
It’s a term I first learned through my faith. It’s the lens I increasingly use in politics. And it might be a good position to evaluate AI’s promise.
Right now the conversation swings between extremes. AI is either snake oil or salvation. The truth sits somewhere in between.
Recent studies tell completely different stories. One shows negligible productivity gains. Another reports double-digit ROI. Some organizations are tying AI use to performance reviews. Others leave experimentation entirely to individual employees. These realities coexist because the technology is not the real variable. Management is.
Leaders who make modest, well-scoped bets, paired with genuine training and governance, are seeing durable gains. Those chasing silver bullets — or avoiding experimentation altogether — are burning trust or wasting time.
I count myself an AI optimist. If it delivers even half of what it promises, that’s a generational leap in capability. But optimism needs discipline. The challenge for mission-driven health organizations isn’t to pick a side in the hype cycle; it’s to manage the middle — to test, learn, and scale with purpose rather than panic.
AI doesn’t need to be miraculous. It needs to be managed well.
🛜 Field Signals
A quick hit on this week’s key policy shifts and industry trends.
✅ Workforce & Adoption
The Dimming Job Market’s Bright Spot: AI Skills — Axios: Despite a cooling job market, demand for AI skills continues to rise, especially in operations and management.
State of AI 2025 — McKinsey Global Survey: Nearly every company uses AI, but most remain in pilot mode; only 6 percent report meaningful financial impact.
🏛️ Governance & Ethics
AI Progress and Recommendations — OpenAI Blog: OpenAI proposed new safety oversight and international governance for “superintelligence.”
Pope Leo XIV on AI and Medicine — Vatican News: Pope Leo XIV warned that AI in healthcare must preserve human dignity and the patient-caregiver bond.
APA Health Advisory: AI Chatbots and Wellness Apps — American Psychological Association: APA cautioned that mental-health chatbots and wellness apps pose privacy risks and lack clinical oversight.
🚀 Innovation & Impact
AI and Functional Precision Medicine — MedTech Intelligence: A federal push for AI in pediatric cancer could transform oncology through functional precision medicine and automation.
From Words to Worlds: Spatial Intelligence — Dr. Fei-Fei Li (Substack): Fei-Fei Li argues the next AI breakthrough will come from spatial intelligence — systems that understand and simulate physics-consistent 3D worlds.
Medicare Will Pay Over $1,000 for AI Heart-Scan Analysis — STAT News: Medicare will reimburse AI-based coronary-plaque analysis tools at roughly $1,000 per scan, prompting debate over value and cost.
Lilly Inks $100M+ AI Drug-Discovery Pact with Insilico — Fierce Biotech: Eli Lilly expanded its AI-driven drug-discovery pipeline with a nine-figure partnership.
🛠️ Practical Edge
Actionable tips, tools, and thoughts to help leaders strengthen capacity and apply AI in their work.
HBR – Workers Don’t Trust AI → adoption is a human-systems challenge, not a technical one.
The Algorithmic Bridge – Why You Can’t Trust Most AI Studies → leaders need data literacy and restraint amid hype.
AI Adopters Club – Leaders Who Use AI Scale It 3× Faster → credibility starts when executives rebuild their own workflows.
CHAI Frontier Model Forum – Risk Categorization Tool → a tool for health systems to evaluate life and patient safety risk for health AI solutions.
Microsoft Copilot Guide → quick wins in spreadsheets build organizational fluency.
Emma App → personal health literacy to understand food labels quicker, powered by AI—transparency made tangible.
🌅 On the Horizon
A quick look at the developments and events expected to shape the weeks ahead.
Nov. 18: The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on next Tuesday on the risks and safeguards of AI chatbots, with a focus on balancing innovation and U.S. leadership in AI with user safety and well-being, particularly children and teens.
Nov. 18-20: AI in Healthcare & Pharma Summit 2025 (RE•WORK) in Boston. Register here.
Nov. 26-27: World AI Congress, London.
Dec. 8-9: Fortune Brainstorm AI San Francisco. Apply to attend here.
Feb. 11-13: The Complexities of AI in Health Care by American Health Law Association in Las Vegas and Virtual. Register here.
Till next time,
