Description

In his new and widely acclaimed book, A Giant Leap, physician and thought leader Dr. Robert Wachter navigates between hype and skepticism to make a compelling case for AI’s power to transform healthcare. He argues that, in a system buckling under the weight of bureaucratic pressures, soaring costs, and clinician burnout, AI doesn’t need to be perfect – it only needs to be better.

Join the Bay Area Council for an engaging conversation with Dr. Wachter, one of the nation’s leading voices in medicine. Dr. Wachter will be joined in conversation by Dr. William Isenberg, Chief Medical & Quality Officer of Sutter Health and co-chair of the Bay Area Council’s Healthcare Committee.

Register today>>

Thanks to Sutter Health’s generous support, the first 100 attendees will receive a signed complimentary copy of A Giant Leap.

About Bob Wachter
Robert Wachter, MD is Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Author of 300 articles and 6 books, he coined the term “hospitalist” in 1996 and is often considered the “father” of the hospitalist field, the fastest-growing medical specialty in U.S. history. He is a past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, past chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. Modern Healthcare magazine has ranked him among the 50 most influential physician-executives in the U.S. more than a dozen times; he was #1 in 2015. His 2015 book, The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age, was a New York Times bestseller. His new book, A Giant Leap: How AI is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future, was an instant Amazon and USA Today national bestseller.

About A Giant Leap
Drawing on extensive research and more than 100 interviews with pioneers across medicine, technology, policy, and business, Wachter shows how AI is already entering hospitals and clinics to draft notes, field patient questions, recommend treatments, interpret images, and guide surgeries. He unflinchingly confronts risks like hallucinations, biases, and misinformation, while revealing how AI can now match, and sometimes surpass, physicians in areas ranging from diagnosis to empathy.

But this isn’t simply a technology story. It’s about the human choices what will determine whether AI becomes healthcare’s salvation or another source of harm and frustration.

Blending clinical insight, vivid storytelling, and journalistic precision, A Giant Leap is a vibrant and timely account of how AI is changing what it means to care – and be cared for – in this age of astonishing technology.