The conversation around artificial intelligence in medicine tends to focus on discovery: curing diseases, accelerating research, unlocking biological progress. But Dr. Dave A. Chokshi, Sternberg Family Professor and Founding Director of the Health and Opportunity Leadership Institute (HOLI) at the Powell School, is asking a different question — not what AI can discover, but what it can deliver.
In a recent piece published by Healthbeat, Dr. Chokshi argues that the most urgent problem in American medicine is not a lack of cures, but a failure to get existing treatments to the people who need them. Less than half of patients with high blood pressure are on an effective regimen, only about a third of patients who qualify for medicines that could cure them of hepatitis C receive them, and fewer than one in five patients who would benefit from therapies for opioid addiction get treated.
Drawing on his experience as a primary care physician at Bellevue Hospital — and on the story of a patient who declined a follow-up colonoscopy after a positive cancer screening because he had lost his job and his health coverage — Dr. Chokshi makes the case that AI’s greatest potential lies in bridging that gap. Imagine a system that contacts a patient in their native language, helps schedule an appointment, and answers questions about preparation – freeing up nurses and social workers to focus their time on more complex cases.
Crucially, Dr. Chokshi cautions that technology alone is not enough. The same structural barriers that prevent patients from accessing care — high drug prices, lack of insurance, systemic inequity — will not be solved by algorithms. What AI can do, he argues, is scale the kind of personalized, persistent engagement that has historically been available only to those with means.
It is a perspective shaped by years of public service, including leading New York City’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign, and now by his work at the Colin Powell School, where his research and teaching center on health, equity, and opportunity.
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