Welcome to the Healthcare Circus: AI, Whisky, and Ethical Headaches
Written by Dr Nick on April 7, 2025
This month’s episode of “News You Can Use” on HealthcareNOWRadio features news from the month of March 2025
News You Can Use with your Hosts Dr Craig Joseph and Dr Nick van Terheyden
The show that gives you a quick insight into the latest news, twists, turns and debacles going on in healthcare withmy friend and co-host Craig Joseph, MD (@CraigJoseph) Chief Medical Officer at Nordic Consulting Partners and myself, where every diagnosis comes with a side of humor. We hope you stay curious, stay engaged, and keep seeking the truth in healthcare in a world that thrives on information.
Buckle up as we dive into the ER of excitement, the ICU of irrationality, and the waiting room of wacky wisdom in this months show that features a review of:
- AI Image Generation
- Latest Government Confirmations
- Liability and AI
- Self-driving cars
- HIMSS 2025
Come for the AI, Stay for the Awkward Booth Encounters
Ah, HIMSS 2025—where the booths are glitzy, the whiskey is non-existent, and AI is apparently the answer to everything. We hit the ground running, weaving through the Las Vegas conference chaos. While many companies handed out coffee like it was liquid gold, Florida’s chapter threw a people-packed party. Why? Because Floridians just love a good gathering. Meanwhile, we went booth-hopping, only to find one poor soul so disinterested he literally put his phone on hold mid-convo just to ask, “How can I help?” Classic conference moment.
The real talk, though? AI. Everyone’s peddling it, claiming it’s the cure for burnout and the key to unlocking physician happiness. Ambient AI scribes now promise doctors more face time with patients and less keyboard tango. But does it really slash burnout, and how exactly do we measure doctor happiness and burnout? While the tech may be clever, convincing us it’s the burnout banisher we’ve all been hoping for might take a little more study and data.
And let’s not forget the self-driving car drama. Waymo’s bots are cruising safer than humans (this can be a low bar; let’s be honest). But when the inevitable fender bender happens, who takes the blame? Spoiler: Not the dude in the backseat. Ethical dilemmas are revving up fast, from crash courses in trolley problems to AI diagnosing your next chest X-ray. Toss in a sprinkle of confirmed healthcare leaders like RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz, and we’ve got a front-row seat to the healthcare Hunger Games. Stay tuned because science might win—or at least get a participation trophy.
We hope you enjoy our take on the latest news and developments in healthcare and want to help you keep untangling the web of information, dodging the sensational pitfalls, and emerging victorious, albeit a little dizzy, on the other side. In the end, the stories we uncover and the discussions we ignite all shape the narrative of our shared future. We want to hear from you especially if you have topics covered or questions you’d like answered. You can reach out directly via the contact form on my website, or send a message on LinkedIn to Craig or me.
Until next week keep solving healthcare’s mysteries before they become your emergencies
Listen live at 4:00 AM, 12:00 Noon or 8:00 PM ET, Monday through Friday for the next week at HealthcareNOW Radio. After that, you can listen on demand (See podcast information below.) Join the conversation on Twitter at #TheIncrementalist.
Listen along on HealthcareNowRadio or on SoundCloud
Raw Transcript
Nick van Terheyden
Nick, welcome to the month of March. I’m Dr Nick and I’m Dr Craig. This week, we’ll be dissecting the latest healthcare news, unraveling the twists and turns and making sense of maybe some of the debacles.
Craig Joseph
Just remember, life’s a lot like a breaking news story, unpredictable, often absurd and occasionally leaves you wondering if it’s all just a cosmic prank.
Nick van Terheyden
This week, we take a look at AI generation of images, and you know, perhaps some of these government confirmations,
Craig Joseph
and we dive into liability in AI, and also self driving cars.
Nick van Terheyden
But first off, this week, we have to cover him. 2025, we were both there, right? We were there. It was, you enjoy it.
Craig Joseph
I was gonna say in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, I yeah, I enjoy seeing my my friends and colleagues. And there’s a lot of very smart people, three of them, well, three colleagues, zero friends. I saw you. Saw you, that’s true. Yeah,
Nick van Terheyden
I was there, and I think you were providing free booze. If I recall
Craig Joseph
you think you make it out like I did, but the company I work for did, yes, but we were, there were a lot of lot of booths doing that, a lot of companies doing that. We had, we had some good meetings and dinners, and we gave out coffee, Nick, but I don’t hear you talking about that podcast, no,
Nick van Terheyden
and you know it was interesting. I noted one particular booth so it was true. So there was basically, this was Vegas, so there was an allowance for alcohol to be served. I think it sort of kicked in at about four, 4pm on the booth floor, you know, conference halls, whatever sounds right, lots of people paid, you know, some substantial amounts of money, I’m sure, to be able to serve and have bars show up. And you know, it’s all regulated, but they paid extra money. And, you know, from an attendee standpoint, which is what I was at, where do you pick? Why do you go to one place over another? Because pretty much it was all the same stuff. I didn’t see a lot of difference. I did go trawling around looking for whiskey. Not a one, not one booth had whiskey, or at least, I think they maybe had whiskey behind the bar, but there was no, you know, specific whiskey tasting, which, you know, major failure in my view. Obviously, yeah,
Craig Joseph
yeah, this conference is horrible.
Nick van Terheyden
And there was one booth that was performing extraordinarily well in terms of the crowd. And I was wondering why, you know, what was it? So I thought, oh, that’s got to be whiskey. Turns out, no, they had skillfully said to and I think this was even significant. It was the Florida chapter of hymns, yes, and they had organized for all Floridians who were at hymns, and part of hymns, you know, as the organization, to meet up at their booth. And it was packed. You could barely get to the bar. And I thought that’s actually really clever, because it made me stop. I mean, I just ambled around looking for the next opportunity to see somebody that I hadn’t seen. But, you know, there was that, to me, was just clever, thoughtful approach to, hey, how do we stand out from the crowd? And when I was talking to others, they said, well, picking Florida was a key element of that, because apparently, Floridians always like to gather together. That’s what I thought. I know nothing about Floridians. Maybe you do
Craig Joseph
well, I was a Floridian,
Nick van Terheyden
really. I didn’t know that. Yeah, I’m a little
Craig Joseph
short. I’m a little short to be a Floridian. I know that’s what you’re thinking, but that’s accurate. I was a Floridian. I I went. I moved there when I was a kid, because, you know, I figured the family’s moving, and I’m nine, I probably should go with you. Better go along. Yeah, yeah. So we moved, I lived in Miami.
Nick van Terheyden
Went to not, no, yeah. So you’d be the dude to actually guide me around, at least from a nine year old perspective, yeah, well,
Craig Joseph
though I stayed through high school, then I stayed Oh, really, yeah, I went to the University of Miami for undergrad. And yeah, I was there four years. We were the national football champions. Two of those four years got. For Nick
Nick van Terheyden
in the Barclays Premier League. It
Craig Joseph
was a different football. It was NCAA. Sorry, yeah, no, no, not what we call soccer, but that would have been impressive, actually. Yeah. So I can, and I don’t think everyone wants to hear me talk about Florida, but I’m happy to give you a little later primer on Florida and explain to you everything. Yeah, yes. Well, what, what? Getting back to that hymns, conference and yes, in marvelous Las Vegas, Nevada, what did you What did you learn? What were some of the big Well,
Nick van Terheyden
I, I’ve got to highlight my craziest moment. And, you know, there were a number. The craziest moment was I, actually, I went round. I had a list. I was working pretty hard to get round booths and individuals, beyond the sort of open networking that I really enjoy, the sort of random opportunities where you meet people you know, folks that you haven’t seen in a while, that all happened, and I love that, but I had a list, and I was at one of these booths, not a big booth. There was one individual there, and I was standing and he was sat down on the phone, talking to somebody a good 1520 seconds as I’m looking waiting, and he finally looks up to acknowledge me, and to be clear, I think I was pretty prevalent in his visual range, even though he didn’t look up and notice me. And I thought he’s going to put down the, you know, finish the call and, you know, okay, I get people have calls, and they were important. No acknowledgement of me throughout any of this. But I hear Him say to the person on the phone, hold on. I’ll be back in a second. Wait for it. Doesn’t hang up, no, puts the phone down to whoever he’s talking to, and asked me, How can I help? Yeah, and
Craig Joseph
now I apologized for that Nick. I did not realize it was you when I did that,
Nick van Terheyden
because I look so different. Yeah, you’re much taller. I’m nothing, nothing like the picture online of me, right? No, no, you’re a redhead and that, well, that is actually, it was true. But
Craig Joseph
so you’re saying you you didn’t find that person engaging. I just,
Nick van Terheyden
you know, my question is, you know, and I’m not naming and shaming. We don’t tend to do that, although we do sort of call some things out, but in this particular instance, I’m not. But you know, my big question is, why spend the money? Why were you there? And if that’s not your money and you were sent there, that’s just it’s inconceivable to me. And I get that, it’s really tough. I’ve done it. I’ve got back ache to prove it, from all the times that I’ve stood on booth duty, on booths where the CEO was absolutely insistent that we could not and should not have chairs and didn’t, and then when they finally said, Well, what about the customers? We were allowed to have chairs, but God forbid you should actually sit in one. So I know it’s hard, and you get calls, but really I just anyway shocking to me, and then the other, I don’t want to say big shock, but I’m going to say it was, let’s call it a classic. Was the booth that was offering some diagnostic tools. This was sleep related, which was one of the areas that I spent a lot of time in, tried to build a company, and it blew up, you know, as the pandemic unfolded. And, you know, this is an FDA approved area for sleep apnea, and they were offering or talking about this, and when I asked about it. What’s the FDA? Their look of, what’s the FDA? Was just really, you you’ve got no idea. You have no understanding of, you know, class two medical devices. Oh, I, I do worry about this. I mean, this is a healthcare conference, and I guess it’s not hims his responsibility to preclude or stop people. Clearly, they don’t, because they had a whole red light therapy thing going on there and that, you know, sucking folks into sit on a bed that looked like a sun bed, but was all about red light it was Open the pod bay doors. Was how I felt when I tried that thing out. And by the way, I still remain clothed, although in one of the booths we did see people taking off shoes and socks, which was, I don’t know, I wasn’t questionable.
Craig Joseph
So what is the red light supposed to do?
Nick van Terheyden
It helps healing. Ah, it’s it’s good for the skin. It’s good for the sub dermis, the dermis. I. Um, I don’t know. I mean, it’s in my gym, and so it must be good right
Craig Joseph
off. It’s in your gym. You should take advantage of it for sure. Not my personal
Nick van Terheyden
gym, to be clear, this is what I’m a member of, premium product that I don’t have access to, because,
Craig Joseph
well, your dermis, your sub dermis, is pretty awesome. I think, Wow.
Nick van Terheyden
Well, thank you very much. That’s, you know, because I haven’t spent all that time in the site. Well, wait, actually, I did when I was living in Africa. So anyway, and then for me, one of the highlights was the sphere, which, you know, for those people that live in Vegas, yeah, who, if they hadn’t been, you know, yeah, time shocking, but yeah, possible. That was a decent experience. I was a little bit disappointed. It wasn’t you too, but otherwise
Craig Joseph
it was, it was clever. Was it a band? Was there a band, or it’s just a movie? No,
Nick van Terheyden
it was just the movie. It was earth. You did get the, the real sensation of movement, which was kind of interesting. It was a pretty silly that you you’ve not been in. I have not i i did turn around and hang on to the people as I walk past
Craig Joseph
and get to my seat. Oh, it’s that steep. Oh, yeah, yeah, but it’s supposed to be every seats, great. And,
Nick van Terheyden
yeah, I don’t know about that. I could tell that there were some of the edges that definitely wouldn’t have been I mean, sure you could look across, but you’d be looking down the side, going, Wait, that’s not real. I can see, but it did. It gave you the sense of motion, and it was very clever. And he enjoyed it. I think that was consensus. Bought it out for a show which was kind of neat, and served some drinks and food and stuff. And somebody was kind enough to organize an invitation for me, so I went along. Yeah.
Craig Joseph
Well, you know, from my perspective, it all came down to two letters, two letters, a and I, oh, in HIMS. You mean a and I and HIMS, yeah, yeah, I’m sorry. Getting back to the reason that we were there, you didn’t go there for the for the whiskey and the and the, that was the reason you went sphere. No. Did not go. Did not go. It was, it was all about artificial intelligence.
Nick van Terheyden
It certainly was, although everyone was really offering artificial intelligence, to be clear,
Craig Joseph
yeah? Well, every, everyone is an artificial intelligence company. Now, in hell, they
Nick van Terheyden
certainly were. It reminded me a lot of meaningful use when that showed up, and then everybody had Meaningful Use.
Craig Joseph
Everyone was a meaningful user of of healthcare technology. Yeah. So did you see anything that was amazing with respect to AI, you know, biggest seem to be ambient.
Nick van Terheyden
And so what that was around that, I think, you know, it’s delivering some value. I’ve seen some interesting reports recently, you know, I think they’re trying to stretch the claims to make it burn out by fighting, which I think is a bit of a stretch from my perspective. I think it can certainly it brings value. And there’s, you know, new participants, new players in that space. And Microsofts Booth was, you know, now, the sort of focal point. It was in a great location. It seemed pretty busy most of the time. But beyond that, I am not, not really. I mean, I didn’t, nothing took my breath away. Yeah.
Craig Joseph
I mean, it’s the ambient listening, or ambient scribe, so that a doctor in a clinic can can have a little basically, they turn on it’s on their phone. There’s just a microphone on their phone, and it records the conversation, and then an AI creates the notes, the progress notes, so that the doctor doesn’t have to do that. Hopefully it’s doing a good job of identifying key parts. And at some point that maybe now or or soon, depending on the on the EHR vendor, it can pull out orders. If you say, well, we’ll start you. I need to refill your cholesterol medicine, and we should increase your your hypertensive medicine, that those orders can then be queued up so that you don’t have to type those in, they won’t be, you know, won’t be ordered until the doctor does something. But certainly seeing that, and that seems to be improving regularly, and a lot of doctors are excited about that. It doesn’t seem to be as much of a time saver and the base in the in the initial research that we’re seeing, but it does seem to be decreasing burnout symptoms, I
Nick van Terheyden
gotta, I have to say I’m more dubious about that. I partly because it’s quite difficult to measure. You know, how do you measure burnout?
Craig Joseph
Yeah, well, there’s ways of measuring, but I’m
Nick van Terheyden
not disputing it. I’m just a little bit more skeptical. Yeah, that. Do you
Craig Joseph
while the time, it seemed not so far to decrease the amount of time, not that I think doctors are spending, clearly they’d be spending less time in the note, assuming that the note gets them 80% of the way there they’re gonna be. I think what might be happening is that doctors are spending the same amount of time overall, which means often more time either looking through the chart to make sure that we understand everything, and or just face to face time with the patient, which would be, yeah, anecdotally,
Nick van Terheyden
I’ve heard much more in the way of time saving. And I guess that’s a perception issue, because what you’re describing is it’s less about the total amount, but more about the focus on the patient, which is, you know, the one of the key assets of this, instead of focusing on a microphone or a computer or whatever it happens to be, this allows you to focus on the patient, and, you know, be rewarded with capture of all of that information that you know, is, I know I always struggled, yeah,
Craig Joseph
well, it’s sometimes, you know, basically what this is, is a scribe, right? And, and some physicians have had scribes for decades, and we call those physicians dermatologists, at least. I that’s been my experience. It’s been dermatologist surgeons, I suspect I yes, some of the higher earning specialties, often surgery, probably the old cardiologist in there as well. I don’t know. I haven’t seen a cardiologist. I’m sure they existed, but yeah, I you know, I remember in medical school going to see a dermatologist, and when I went back for a recheck, he walks in and asked me how some event was that I mentioned six months ago or 12 months ago? And I was like, Oh, wow, yeah, you remember that? Yeah, we were talking about that, yeah, no, he didn’t really remember that that was written down by his scribe in the in the note, and he was able to look it up, but it to your point. It felt good for me. Yeah,
Nick van Terheyden
like it does. It humanizes that interaction you feel. Yeah, you are the most important person,
Craig Joseph
yeah, and so to your you know, you were asking about, how do you measure burnout? I i think if doctors, your your apps, your points, well, taken that if doctors are simply happy because they don’t have to remember to write down every point that they they wanted to discuss, then their perceptions are going to be that this thing is helping them, and their burnout hence will will go down. Because even though I might be working just as hard Minute by Minute, I’m I’m not feeling it or the, you know, the vibes, the vibes are better
Nick van Terheyden
so, so talking about AI, I think the big trending piece that I’ve seen a couple of things. One is this new image generator, which I don’t have access to. It’s in a paid tier. It might be in the extensive paid tier that allows you to get images that are in the style of, and, you know, this is almost anything, but the big trend that was was all around This anime, I guess it’s called this specific individual, called Ghibli. I’m maybe mispronouncing it, because it’s definitely not my area of expertise, animation studio style that is founded, was founded by hi IO Mia Zaki, I think, who’s still alive, hates AI and has called it an insult to life itself. And here’s my thing about this, there has to be a lawsuit coming, because there is no way you trained any of this without scraping all of those images. And you know that he definitely didn’t allow for it, given his stance, which has been long standing Since 2016 and that’s not just the only instance. There’s multiples of this. It’s just, it’s shocking to me. There’s even screen scraping going on for the illegal libgen, which you know. But the other thing that you know, for me is interesting, is the 50 million miles of waymos that are the automated taxi service are crashing a lot less than human drivers, very clearly, based on the data. So even when they’re mixing with real drivers, they’re still doing better, which was always a question. I think that that had been outstanding. We could now show that. I think we’re going to see an awful lot more of this.
Craig Joseph
Yeah, so you’re talking about self driving cars. There’s no one driving that car. You’re sitting in the back as a taxi kind of occupant, and they. Have problems, but their problems are much less frequent and typically less severe because they Yeah, there’s no emotions. They’re never running late. Dr, Nick, right, that way, most never running late. If you have to get to the airport and you need to go
Nick van Terheyden
fast, now ask chat. GPT that question, and I bet it will come up with something that would surprise you and say, Hey, I’m running. Like, get off. I
Craig Joseph
there. They can’t. They are they go at one speed and, you know, one they don’t. They don’t take chances. And that’s one of the things that I think someone described a way more, I’ve never been in one but, um, someone described a way Mo is it drives the way you would expect your grandmother to drive?
Nick van Terheyden
Yeah, I can imagine. Yes, yeah, right. So I think we all mouth shut. Well, we all have a because I’m an above average driver like everybody else, everyone
Craig Joseph
I am also an above average driver just like everyone else. And if I were in a hurry to get to the airport, I would never take shortcuts or go five miles over the speed limit? No, absolutely not. But it doesn’t. And, you know, the question, though, that I have, and I think it’s relevant, it’s related to healthcare, is, well, what happens when it does cause a problem? You know, who’s to blame? Who’s to blame? If you really well, if I’m in the back seat. Good luck on that. So it’s not me in the back seat.
Nick van Terheyden
Well, I just thought, generally, you’re to blame until I think that’s the famous of this show that
Craig Joseph
is fair, and I accept blame often, but in this case, I will not. It’s similar to so we don’t know, society doesn’t have any really good answers for that. No, we I think it’s better for society, right? Fewer, fewer crashes, but right now, 100% of the time we we we find someone to blame, right? We always find someone to blame, whether they’re blame worthy or not. We find someone to blame you were driving the car and so unless we can right?
Nick van Terheyden
But I mean, it raises the issue of the ethical question when there are two possible routes available, and one route kills a young child, the other route, or option, kills an elderly mother, and you have no other choices Based on the dynamics of that particular what does the AI choose? Yeah, you I don’t think you can program that in. I don’t
Craig Joseph
think, I don’t think you can. The point would be neither, right? That would be the choice, obviously. But, yeah. But you know, similarly, if, if we get to the point where we’re not talking about this now, but if we get to the point where you get an x ray or a CT scan and it’s not, and it’s reviewed by an AI, says everything’s fine, and there’s no radiologist looking over the shoulder, who’s to blame for that if there’s a problem, when there’s a problem, because we know there will be, it’s, I don’t, I don’t know what the answer is, but It’s, it’s something that we have to deal with today, for all the for any AI, I think almost any, anything of value, there’s a physician in the loop somewhere who will sign off like that, that AI,
Nick van Terheyden
speaking of having a physician in the loop, yes, sir. We, we, we a couple of minutes left to talk about the nominations, approvals. There’s a proper term for that that I can’t remember, but confirmation, confirmations. Thank you. That we’ve seen of certainly in and around the healthcare, yes, Medicare, we’ve seen RFK Jr, that’s Robert F Kennedy Jr, as the secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services was confirmed. Marty McCary was confirmed. I think he was. Was it the FDA, I forget who was going where, and Dr Oz is has also been confirmed. There’s a lot of conflict in there between their opinions and the opinions of others within the same groups, at least, and we’ve already seen a little bit of the action. So RFK, I think he laid into the whole area of drug advertising, which you and I have talked about. I know we’re both on the same page when it comes to this, enough of this drug advertising, but there’s a big lobby group, and he’s just shredded, or at least he announced he’s going to shred the HHS, which is filled with highly skilled, tremendous people that are trying to protect our health. Little bit, I don’t know. Next month we’ll, we’ll have to see what’s happened, right? Well, we’ll
Craig Joseph
know more. Hopefully he’ll, he’ll keep up. He’ll hopefully that science will win, right? That’s all I that’s what I really want, is that not opinions just
Nick van Terheyden
like science, but real, just like that says that at home,
Craig Joseph
I like it, not science fiction, just science, just science.
Nick van Terheyden
In fact, I have several coasters that I’m very proud of that I got made anyway. As usual, we have run out of time, unfortunately. So we find ourselves at the end of another episode exploring health care’s mysteries before they became your and mine and Craig’s obviously emergencies. Until next time I’m Dr Nick
Craig Joseph
and I’m Dr Craig
