This week’s episode of Practical AI in Healthcare dives into AI, truth, and the future of data in the government with Dr. Martin Leach, Chief Data Officer at Black Canyon Consulting.
Dr. Martin Leach, PhD, is a data, science, and technology leader with a career spanning some of the most innovative organizations in life sciences and academia. A self-described “data geek,” Martin began his career as a molecular neuropharmacologist before shifting from the bench to data-driven discovery. Over the past two decades, he has held senior roles at Merck, Biogen, Alexion, and AstraZeneca, and was the inaugural Chief Information Officer at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Today, Martin serves as Chief Data Officer at Black Canyon Consulting, where he works these organizations on projects that unite bioinformatics, AI, and data federation — from building semantic knowledge graphs to creating “gold-standard” datasets for model validation. His work bridges the worlds of science, computation, and policy, shaping how government and industry can responsibly harness AI to advance biomedical research and healthcare delivery.
From building gold-standard datasets to exploring quantum AI, Martin shares how these projects are shaping the next generation of healthcare data science.
In this week's episode, Leon and Steve unpack and digest the various pearls provided by our first 7 podcasts. From frameworks to consider concerning AI in the business and healthcare setting to AI Literacy, we highlight the various lessons learned as we move into our third month of the Podcast.
This episode of Practical AI in Healthcare features Brendan Arbuckle, CIO of The Jackson Laboratory (JAX). Brendan shares how a world-leading genetics institute is deploying AI to advance research, streamline operations, and raise AI literacy across its organization. From ethical sandboxes to research breakthroughs and “everyday AI” that saves clinicians time, he offers a refreshingly grounded take on what responsible AI looks like in practice.
Listen now to learn how JAX balances innovation with rigor and why Brendan believes AI is “bigger than IT—it’s a new language of discovery.”
Season 1, Episode 6 welcomes John Glaser—executive in residence at Harvard Medical School, former SVP at Cerner, past CEO of Siemens Health Services, and a pioneer in healthcare IT. Join hosts Dr. Steve Labkoff and Dr. Leon Rozenblit as they explore Glaser’s unique perspective on the trajectory of AI in healthcare, drawing lessons from over 40 years of industry transformation. Find out:
Why every breakthrough, from the mainframe to mobile, set the stage for today’s AI revolution.
How practical deployments—like specialized AI for prior authorizations—deliver true value, while hype often fills the void left by a lack of hands-on experience.
The importance of focusing on real-world ROI, efficiency, and smart clinical capacity management, with less emphasis on “sexy” use cases and more on what genuinely reshapes healthcare for the better.
Essential insights on domain specificity: why expert models outperform generic AI in high-stakes environments, and how learning from implementation drives success.
Why building successful AI adoption means mitigating risks, fostering literacy—not just technical training—and evolving governance to match pace with technology.
Glaser’s message is clear: “This is a remarkable time. This is remarkable technology. Extraordinarily powerful. ... But the way you deal with this kind of stuff is one step at a time.” Join the conversation and stay practical about what’s next in healthcare AI.
Yair Saperstein, MD, MPH, is CEO and Co-Founder of Avo, the AI engine used by healthcare organizations to improve care and operational outcomes in a way clinicians love. He is a hospitalist at Mount Sinai Hospital. Dr. Saperstein graduated from Albert Einstein College of Medicine with distinction in research in global health and from SUNY Downstate with a Master's in Public Health in hospital policy and management.
Avo is the OS for healthcare AI applications, providing a single point of entry for health systems to deploy any AI-powered workflow. Their initial suite of applications focuses on clinical decision support, chart review, scribing, and patient discharges.
Yair will discuss the challenges faced by clinicians and how Avo is changing some of the most perplexing issues in the day-to-day practice of medicine.
This week, Leon Rozenblit and I digest the wonderful wisdom we've heard over the first two months of the podcast. We try to distill all the various pearls that were dropped by our guest speakers.
If you missed the first series of episodes, this will help you both catch up and speed through the learnings that came out of these discussions.
Scott Snyder is many things: a part-time professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, an author on AI, and the Chief Digital Officer of Eversana. In this episode we will explore Scott's various pursuits, his new book, and his view on where AI an Healthcare are intersecting.
One of the most underserved communities in the world of AI is that of clinicians. But Dr. Dereck Paul of Glass Health is trying to change that. Being a clinician himself, he's bringing a new approach to something that's the bane of a clinician's existence - creating and documenting interactions with patients. Listen in to this young entrepreneur as he unpacks his vision for clinical medicine and how Glass Health is trying to change things for clinicians for the better.
This week we hear from someone in the thick of the AI game, John Apathy from XponenL.AI. John's the Chief Solution's Officer for this recently acquired AI firm that focuses in on the pharmaceutical R&D space. John explains his perspectives as well as some of the work being done by his firm for some of their largest customers.
When OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, it marked a turning point in the global conversation around artificial intelligence. Virtually overnight, industries across the board began exploring how Generative AI could transform the way we work, think, and solve problems. Healthcare was no exception. From improving clinical workflows and accelerating research, to empowering patients and supporting care decisions, the entire ecosystem began to imagine a future radically reshaped by AI.
Fast forward to today: the buzz hasn't faded—but the outcomes are still catching up.
Despite a flood of announcements, pilot programs, and innovation initiatives, truly impactful AI implementations in healthcare remain surprisingly rare. The promise was huge. The follow-through? Often underwhelming. For a sector where lives are at stake and progress must be both ethical and measurable, the gap between hype and real-world utility is especially stark.
That’s why we launched Practical AI in Healthcare.
This podcast is dedicated to surfacing the ideas, projects, and tools that are actually working—today. Not speculative futures or marketing sizzle, but grounded, proven use cases of AI making meaningful change across the healthcare landscape.
Each episode features candid conversations with the people driving that change: healthcare leaders, technologists, clinicians, researchers, entrepreneurs, and authors of the latest books and peer-reviewed articles. Together, we explore how they're applying AI to solve real problems—in clinical care, clinical trials, diagnostics, operations, public health, and beyond. We dig into the details: What challenge are they addressing? What did implementation really take? What resistance did they face—and how did they overcome it? Most importantly, what impact are they seeing?
In this pilot episode, co-hosts Dr. Steven Labkoff and Dr. Leon Rozinblit introduce the vision behind the podcast and lay the groundwork for future conversations. They discuss why now is the right moment for this kind of show, what defines a “practical” AI solution in healthcare, and how listeners—regardless of their role in the industry—can use these insights to inform their own work.
New episodes drop every other week. If you're tired of inflated promises and looking instead for signal in the noise—join us.
