-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future
by Robert Wachter
From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Digital Doctor comes an engaging, clear-eyed, and ultimately hopeful examination of healthcare's efforts to embrace generative artificial intelligence.
In A Giant Leap, physician and thought leader 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.
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 that 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 offers an indispensable roadmap for healthcare leaders, clinicians, and patients. It 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.
"An evenhanded and insightful exploration of the ways artificial intelligence could impact the medical profession…A clear-eyed road map of Al's potential in medicine." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An accessible, often fascinating primer on AI tools changing clinical practice—for better or worse... Essential, illuminating reading." —Kirkus Reviews
"Bob Wachter has written the definitive account of AI's transformation of healthcare, capturing the revolutionary potential unfolding right now and the unglamorous work of making it real. Drawing on his experience and interviews, this book avoids both Silicon Valley hype and medical pessimism to give a clear-eyed view of where AI is likely to succeed and fail in medical care. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand where medicine is heading." —Ethan Mollick, bestselling author of Co-Intelligence and Co-Director, Generative AI Labs at Wharton
"A Giant Leap tackles the central question in healthcare today: Will AI be another digital disappointment or a genuine transformation? By offering an engaging, hype-free case for informed optimism, Wachter's book provides an all-important guide." —Eric Topol, MD, chair of Innovative Medicine at the Scripps Research Institute and bestselling author of Super Agers and Deep Medicine
This information about A Giant Leap was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Robert Wachter is chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he is also the Holly Smith Distinguished Professor in Science and Medicine and holds the Benioff Endowed Chair in Hospital Medicine. He has appeared more than a dozen times on Modern Healthcare magazine's list of the fifty most influential physician-executives in the US and was number one on the list in 2015. An elected member of the prestigious National Academy of Medicine, he coined the term "hospitalist" and is considered the father of the hospitalist field, the fastest-growing specialty in modern medicine. He is the author of five books, including The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine's Computer Age. He is married to author and journalist Katie Hafner; they live in San Francisco with their miniature poodle, Newman.
If you liked A Giant Leap, try these:
by Elisabeth Rosenthal
Published 2018
Award-winning New York Times reporter Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal reveals the dangerous, expensive, and dysfunctional American healthcare system, and tells us exactly what we can do to solve its myriad of problems.
by Henry Marsh
Published 2016
An unforgettable insight into the countless human dramas that take place in a busy modern hospital, and a lesson in the need for hope when faced with life's most difficult decisions.
by Louisa Hall
Published 2016
A thoughtful, poignant novel that explores the creation of Artificial Intelligence - illuminating the very human need for communication, connection, and understanding.
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
