Dr. Robert Wachter is chair of the UCSF Department of Medicine, a pioneer in the hospitalist field, and author of A Giant Leap: How AI is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future (Portfolio/Penguin, 2026). Four years after ChatGPT’s launch triggered healthcare AI’s latest hype cycle, Wachter examines whether this technology is finally delivering on healthcare’s long-promised digital transformation.

In his talk, Wachter explores how healthcare is shifting from its initial, EHR era of digitization toward an AI-driven future that could fundamentally reshape medical practice. While he acknowledges well-known challenges like hallucinations, bias, and misinformation, his focus centers on more complex issues: how automation may erode clinician skills, the fragile role of the “human in the loop,” and the organizational restructuring required to harness AI’s potential. Drawing on Hemingway’s observation about bankruptcy happening “gradually, then suddenly,” Dr. Wachter considers whether healthcare has reached its own Hemingway moment — and what role hospitalists will play in navigating this breathtaking transformation.