AI for Interoperability in Health Care: Philips’s Carla Goulart Peron

**Sam Ransbotham** (0:02)
How is one clinician thinking about applying AI to health care in additive ways that improve access to care, clinician confidence, and patient experience? Find out on today's episode.

**Carla Goulart Peron** (0:13)
I'm Dr. Carla Goulart Peron from Phillips, and you are listening to Me, Myself, and AI.

**Sam Ransbotham** (0:19)
Welcome to Me, Myself, and AI, a podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review, exploring the future of artificial intelligence.
I'm Sam Ransbotham, Professor of Analytics at Boston College. I've been researching data, analytics, and AI at MIT SMR since 2014, with research articles, annual industry reports, case studies, and now 13 seasons of podcast episodes. In each episode, corporate leaders, cutting-edge researchers, and AI policymakers join us to break down what separates AI hype from AI success.
Our guest today is Dr. Carla Goulart Peron, Chief Medical Officer at Philips. Philips is a healthcare technology company behind imaging systems, patient monitoring, and a growing suite of AI-based clinical tools. What I find fascinating about Carla's perspective is that she started her career as a physician in Sao Paulo's public health system, where demand far outstrips resources. She's carried that lens into the C-suite. She's now leading medical strategy for a company that's betting heavily on AI to close gaps in care. Carla, welcome to the show.

**Carla Goulart Peron** (1:27)
Thank you very much, Sam.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:29)
Many listeners might still associate Philips with more consumer electronics. But can you tell us about the company in terms of health care and the kinds of things you're doing?

**Carla Goulart Peron** (1:38)
Yeah, of course. It's indeed a company that has 130 years and has been in many areas. But in the last few decades, Philips shift into health care fully. We start with the imaging, so the diagnostic area, x-ray, CT, MRI, ultrasound. Then we go into the interventional therapy, into the cat labs. We also are very much present into the ICU and any area of the hospital where you are monitoring signals coming from those patients. Also heavily invested in monitoring things outside of the hospital as well.
And then the last piece, but not less important, definitely AI that is supporting all those areas of care and keep growing in a very hot topic right now.

**Sam Ransbotham** (2:29)
Yeah, as you were listing these technologies, I was thinking, yeah, those are classic applications where AI has made huge advances with imaging and these sorts of things. I mentioned earlier, you trained as a physician and you worked there in both the public and the private sector, sometimes in the same day, I think, switching back and forth.
So what did that experience teach you about where healthcare breaks down in a way that maybe technology can help?

**Carla Goulart Peron** (2:54)
You are right. In the morning, I was working in the public sector in Brazil where scarcity of healthcare workers, technology, information sometimes is very much present. So we need to work with the best of their capacity to offer care for those patients. But it's a universal healthcare, which means everybody has access to. So there is a benefit there too.
And sometimes in the afternoon or in the night, I was working in the best of the best hospitals in the private sector with everything available.
So I think that teaches you a lot of resilience, personally as an individual, as a physician. But also you give you the chance to try different things and learn from those experiences. But also makes so much clear to an individual like me, how much technology can actually build a bridge and help support more patients that are expecting to get access to health care overall. But whatever it is because it's expediting the way we're seeing those patients, because it's connecting the data points of information or even allowing collaboration across the specialties that may not be present in the public sector.

**Sam Ransbotham** (4:01)
So was there a specific moment that you just said, this is something that technology could really help with or could help fix? Was there anything that made you think technology might be the answer?

**Carla Goulart Peron** (4:11)
Oh, many times, but I love sharing an example of ultrasound. But I was just coming out of residency actually, and starting to see patients on my own. And ultrasound, it is one of the biggest diagnostic tool that we use in the OB-GYN practice. But not always we had access to those machines in the hospital setup. And sometimes we had access to those machines, but we are not qualified to use them.
And so technology came into reality today, and I'm very jealous about the people that are learning today their own clinical practice, in a way that you have clear collaboration. And so you can really open the technology, open the ultrasound machine, get access to an expert that can be anywhere in the planet, right? Let's say in the same city, just to go and make it easier from the clinical practice perspective, to guide you to see what you are seeing, that same imaging, help you to capture the right imaging and kind of expedite the technology of that in some other places, like the ones that were practicing in the public sector. I would need to transfer that patient sometimes to another facility, which means call an ambulance, be stuck in traffic, just to get the image capture and then patient back for you to be able to take a final diagnostic and initiate therapy. So, I mean, that was like wine and water, unfortunately, between those two words that I was living in.