Eric Topol, M.D.: Can AI empower physicians and revolutionize patient care?

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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I guess this week is Dr. Eric Topol. Eric is a very famous cardiologist, geneticist and digital medicine researcher slash pioneer. He's the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, TSRI. And prior to coming to Scripps, he served as the chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, a post he held for about 15 years.
We actually start the interview by talking about the story that led to him leaving the Cleveland Clinic. And actually we spent quite a bit of time on this story, which is something that I certainly remember following during its unfolding in the early part of the 2000s. He's also the editor in chief of Medscape. And in 2012, he published a book called The Creative Destruction of Medicine. What we talk about today though is his, I believe his third book, but it could be his fourth, called Deep Medicine. And this is something I've been wanting to talk with Eric about for some time, because it really goes into, in a non-sci-fi way, the application of artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine learning in medicine, which is, as you probably realize, a field that is at times upsettingly slow to adopt to technical change. We talk about a lot of things in this episode, and in a surprisingly brief period of time for one of my podcasts, actually, we talk a lot about the gut biome, and I actually have a great and spirited discussion about it because, as some of you may know, I'm kind of a skeptic of this whole gut biome is gonna be the answer to all of our woes. But I think in the end, Eric and I really kind of end up being much more closely aligned in our views of the utility of this tool as a way to provide predictive insights. In fact, there are a number of things that I came out of this episode with some follow-up notes for myself, as far as people I want to connect with, researchers that I want to connect with to better understand how I can utilize that information for some of my own clinical interests. I think what comes across in the end of this discussion is that doctors aren't going anywhere. And in fact, Eric has a slightly contrarian view of what the impact of AI in medicine will be.
He argues that it's not at all that doctors are gonna go away, it's just that doctors are gonna change their focus and frankly focus on the one thing that doctors and humans in general can do far better than machines. So with that said, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Dr. Eric Topol.
Well, Eric, thanks so much for coming over on a Friday afternoon.

**Eric Topol** (3:14)
Great to be with you, Peter.

**Peter Attia** (3:15)
This is kind of funny because we've both lived in San Diego for over 10 years and your name comes up all the time.
Everybody says to me, you must know Eric Topol. And I say, well, of course I know of him, but no, I don't know him.
And where it really comes up is every time I'm at Dexcom.
And obviously you're on the board there. And I know Kevin Sayer very well. And I met several folks on the team. So it's hard to believe this is the first time we're meeting.

**Eric Topol** (3:38)
It is. I've heard a lot about you over the years, Peter. You know, you mentioned Dexcom. I've been on their board for nine years and I've watched this early medical wireless world of sensors be transformed. So that's been really a privilege.
Whereas most people think about steps as a wearable sensor and not glucose. So, you know, it's been a great company that started nine years ago, at least when I started with them, they were really having a rough time to get people with type 1 diabetes to use continuous glucose and that's really changed a lot.