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Welcome to BIOTECH NATION !!! With understandable interviews requiring no background in science, BTN attracts a wide global audience. From everyday people looking for hope in treatments in development, to bioentrepreneurs interested in the experience of their fellow travelers, to venture capitalists looking for possibilities in cutting-edge breakthroughs, to scientists simply interested in the work of others, BioTech Nation is the voice of human endeavor, driving science to new realities for everyone. These interviews are drawn directly from the public radio program, "Tech Nation", which also can be heard in numerous global radio and podcasting venues.
You've heard of Gen AI or perhaps you know it as generative AI. Well, how about generative health? Once again, probably not. Technation Health chief correspondent, doctor Daniel Kraft, has just coined another new term. Daniel, welcome back.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Great to be back.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Say, I wanna ask you, we have all been talking about generative AI. Now you're talking about generative health?
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Yeah. I think I made up the term, but, you know, gen AI is the the new new thing, and it keeps getting more and more incredible. And in the health care space, AI and gen AI, you know, from Chat GPT applied to, asking diagnostic questions to reading your X-ray is getting, you know, more and more powerful. And one of, I think, the most exciting potential future applications is to really enable it to sort of hyper personalize not just our sort of medicine, but our our health. And there was a announcement, in early July from Sam Altman, the cofounder of Chechi PT and Arianna Huffington, who's well known for starting, Huffington Post and her platform called Thryv that they're, combining forces to build a sort of new AI driven behavior change platform that they think it sort of transform health.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:So I thought we'd talk a bit about the new opportunities to really, shift our behaviors and how maybe AI and generative AI can can play a role in that.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Oh, I am all ears. If they'll change their behavior first, then I'll take a look and see what I wanna do.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Well, ears ears are important. The challenge is, you know, you can listen to all the advice out there. Right?
Dr. Moira Gunn:Right.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:But it's often kinda one size fits all advice. You know, eat more or eat less, exercise more, get more sleep, you know, do some meditation. And, you know, behavior change can sort of be quote unquote a miracle drug both for, you know, longevity and prevention, and for optimizing outcomes from disease therapy. But, we know behavior change is one of the hardest nuts to crack in in health care beyond.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Right.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:And, you know, our behaviors, just as a reminder, especially our relatively unhealthy ones, you know, from not enough activity, poor diet, stressed, enough sleep, skipping your health screenings. Those are the things that really drive almost all the top chronic conditions from metabolic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, risk for cancer, dementia. And those bad behaviors then account for about 80% of our total cost for chronic disease and illnesses worldwide. So if we can start to crack the nut on our behaviors, there's a huge downstream of impact on our individual and societal health and and costs.
Dr. Moira Gunn:So what do we know about human behavior in terms of getting people to do things?
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Well, I think just like, when we think about precision or personalized medicine, personalized, you know, behavior change, I think, needs to be part of our new realm. We all respond to things a little bit differently based on where we grew up, our age, our culture, our language, our incentives, our personality types. If I'm an EMTB and you're an INTJ
Dr. Moira Gunn:Whatever the heck that is.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Right. You know, if you're if you're if you're extrovert versus introvert, if you like badges or points or social cred, and you might use those as as sort of, you know, the carrot or the stick, for doing better behaviors, you know, you can't talk to your patient or to your coach or to your kid about those in the same way. So I think the potential with a lot of the new digital health tools and interfaces from our wearables and others is the messaging they can give us, the personalized coaching, the digital twin picture it can make of you based on who you are and how you talk to it. And it might know your genome and your metabolomics from a horrible continuous glucose monitor. It knows what you did last summer.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:It knows from your smartphone where you've been at 2 in the morning. And so it can be a little bit more hyper personalized, let's say, in the messages. For example, I've got my Apple Watch on right now and, you know, I like to get my exercise in. And it sometimes reminds me to stand up if I'm sitting at my desk and take a walk, but I'm flying on an airplane across the country in the window seat and says time to take a walk, time to stand. It should know that I'm on a flight based on my calendar and when I'm gonna land and, maybe give you nudges that are have situational awareness, you know, based on something as simple as a calendar.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Or the use user interface might show up as an avatar of my mother or of my favorite, sports figure, if I want the right motivation or demotivation. And so we're gonna enter this new era where our sort of personalized health coaches will come to us using JNAI in the right language that we respond to, maybe developing real time music or a meditation virtual reality entity that will feel kind of what we might need for that moment to stay on track or to change a significant behavior, something as simple as getting your workout in to really dramatically changing your diet in a more healthy way.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Well, could you arrange for George Clooney to call me every morning?
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Well, AI George would be happy to show up. He might show up on your Amazon Alexa. You might you might want the George Clooney from the ER days or do you want the more recent George Clooney? You know, how much grade you want there?
Dr. Moira Gunn:Yeah. I'm I'm thinking ER days. I'm thinking ER days. Definitely. Nothing wrong, George.
Dr. Moira Gunn:I mean, we all get up we all get up there, you know. We keep rolling along. You and I have talked for how many years now? And every step, like, yeah, I get a little nudge that looks like I am one of these people and I don't think I'm alone. The moment I realized you're trying to nudge me, I'm like, alright, nudge it.
Dr. Moira Gunn:There is the psychology of what gets you up out of your seat is so different and I'm sure the psychologist could tell us there are many things. But to have a really big generative AI backing and then say, okay. How do you figure out what's best for you? I I'm just I'm really kinda perplexed, you know, as to how it's gonna happen.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Well, I think it might be helpful to know that, Moyer, are you one of those unnudgeables and maybe you need a different form of communication. It might mean that you need, you know, the George Clooney, incentive or that, you know, when you look in the mirror in the future, we've talked about this, you see virtual you if you've, you know, done your healthy workout and stop having donuts for breakfast, not that you have donuts
Dr. Moira Gunn:for breakfast.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:But, you know, the ability now for those communications to leverage Gen AI and real time data and insights so that they're also, you know, can be gamified. Sometimes people respond to points and badges, but also that they have some variety. Right? Because a lot of them, you know, the Fitbits of the world to the Apple Watches, they have some beautiful user interfaces, but they're pretty much the same. What if it kind of really could blend and learn you and your habits?
Dr. Daniel Kraft:And we're starting to see that, by the way, with I'm wearing, you know, 2 different wearable rings like the Oura ring, for example, now has an AI little coach that's learning you over time or the WHOOP, which you also have on. And they are becoming smarter coaches for both workouts and beyond. It can start to sift through your data and see, looks like you're a little tired today. You got to think of the sleep. We're not gonna recommend that you go do a marathon.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:So, you know, Gen AI that has the ability, again, have personalized music, visuals, virtual environments, nudges, and can even interact with your real coach or your physician, I think has the ability to to move the the needle. And and again, it'll take some time to see these bear out. There's also maybe some, you know, dystopian possibilities when you're were over,
Dr. Moira Gunn:you know,
Dr. Daniel Kraft:quantified and everyone's, you know, trying to hit some sort of metric. It was a great, not Twilight Zone episode, but that, other series that, had a had a had a series where, you know, folks kinda live to get their quantified self points and their behaviors were over over tech driven. But big picture, when you have someone social, you know, they expose them, their history, their health journey, and where they wanna what they wanna achieve, I think we can use some of these new tools in much more impactful ways.
Dr. Moira Gunn:And I really get from what you're talking about is that if we can get these tools to have a whole lot more tools, tools on on speed or whatever it is, tools on steroids, that they have more options to deliver the, invitations. I'll call them invitations opposed to nudges. The invitations to do things. It's like, oh, what a good idea. I could do that right now.
Dr. Moira Gunn:You know? And, it's really an unexplored space. They're really into some new things about how one might surround oneself with technology to really improve yourself in the ways that you wanna be improved.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Right. And we don't wanna be, you know, say, I don't like surrounded by technology and have lots of wearables and other bills on. We almost want the technology to get out of the way and also to appropriately keep the human in the loop. So, I do work out 3 times a week using this app called future.co, and I've got a human coach that programs my elements. I chat back with him.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:You know, I'd like to keep the human in a loop, but when he's not coaching me, you know, the the AI coach, which is learning and looking at my profiles and how I'm doing and my strength, could start informing both him and, you know, making sure I stay motivated. So this whole new realm of behavior change methodology, and it's gonna be exciting to see companies like Thrive Global partnering with OpenAI and others in the mix, from the Auras and the Whoops and the Fitbits, to others that are gonna start to, you know, people to sift through massive amounts of data and gain insights and learn what really might work for for individuals like you. And that can really democratize, you know, life saving benefits, prevent people from ever getting diabetes or heart disease or optimizing their mental health and resiliency. And so I think, you know, as opposed to how we spend our dollars on sick care, leveraging some of these new tools and technologies in really human centric ways, can have a huge benefit for for all of us.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Well, since myself and my fellow uncooperatives are really waiting to see what the heck is going on here, I have one final question. The last time we spoke, you had your wife's Fitbit on. Has she taken possession of the Fitbit, or do you still have it on?
Dr. Daniel Kraft:She still has a back her Fitbit didn't like my wrist and and also knew that it wasn't her. Right? You can tell from these wearables, for example, about who's wearing it from their personalized gait, from maybe their sleep patterns. And so, you know, folks might wanna cheat and get their points on by putting the Fitbit on the dog or their kid. It might be hard to to to cheat the machine going forward.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:And again, you know, we've mentioned this in prior sessions. It's not about the data from all these tools and technologies and wearables and otherables and voiceables. And it's it's how you gain the the insights from the the data and that how that data turns into knowledge. It becomes actionable. So you can know all the things about things to do to improve your health and wellness and lose weight, etcetera.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:But unless you act on them and the new science of AI enabled, behavior change and personalized nudges and and interactions, I think, can has the potential to play a, an important role going forward.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Well, thank you, Daniel. We'll see you soon.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Thanks. And, I'll send you some George Clooney nudges.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Alright. Technation Health chief correspondent, doctor Daniel Kraft is the founder and chair of NextMed Health on the web at nextmed.healthanddigital.health. More information about Daniel at danielcraftmd.net.