What AI in Healthcare Can Teach Us About Its Impact on Education

Diane and I sit down with Dr. Tom Lee, acclaimed physician and founder of One Medical and Galileo Health, to explore the parallels between healthcare and education in the age of AI. Our conversation dove into how Lee’s mission to radically transform healthcare systems mirrors similar challenges and opportunities in education, especially around the adoption and integration of AI. We discussed shifting from legacy models to more holistic, technology-enabled frameworks that prioritize both personalized service and systemic change.

Media Mentioned:

Galileo

Class Disrupted with Julia Freeland Fisher, “Needed in a World with AI: Real Experiences, Real People”

Diane Tavenner

Hey, this is Diane. Welcome to Class Disrupted season seven, where Michael and I are looking at the world of education through the lens of AI and purposely starting really big. In this episode of the podcast, we zoomed way out into an entirely different field, health care. I love doing that because often I find that I can see education so much more clearly when I contrast it with similar fields like healthcare is certainly my number one choice. To this end, we had a fascinating conversation with Dr. Tom Lee, the founder of One Medical and Galileo Health, about the impacts of AI on his world and the potential parallels in education. There were a few things that struck me that I think might interest you. The first is systems.

Tom is trying to change the healthcare system, literally, and he thinks in systems. You know, in our conversation, we talked a lot about how AI might be able to accelerate system change for good. And in my experience, most of the conversations around the impact of AI in education is focused on student, teacher, classroom level, which is obviously imperative. And the system itself will have an outsized impact on the individual experience. And so it’s critical for us to be talking about that big system. And I think Tom helps us do that. He’s also an innovator and an entrepreneur, and he’s driven to transform a system he feels isn’t serving people well. And I personally find his story very inspiring and parallel in many ways to the paths that so many great educators have taken, are taking or may want to take.

And I think they’ll find Tom an inspiring character in that. And then finally, I’m drawn to the connection between healthcare and education. I mean, let’s be honest, as educators, we can’t be effective if people aren’t healthy. And we have a ton of evidence that people are more healthy when they’re educated. And I just found our conversation to be a bit of an invitation to think about how we hold a holistic view of what it means to have the privilege and responsibility of developing and caring for humans, especially in this age of AI. So with that, I hope you enjoy it.

Hey, Michael.

Michael Horn

Hey, Diane. It is good to see you. And I’m excited for today’s conversation because actually I’ll out ourselves, Jeff Salingo on my Future U podcast. He and I, a few years back we had some healthcare folks come on the higher education because we thought M & A, healthcare. There’s been a lot of it. Maybe there’s something we can learn about in colleges and universities because there needs to be a lot more M & A, frankly. And we’re like, they’re analogous sectors. And then we, by the end of the conversation we’re like, wow, that’s why colleges and universities have like no M & A.

They’re completely not analogous in the way we thought that they were. So I love conversations where we get to stretch our bounds and learn more. And I think today’s might do just that for us.

Diane Tavenner

Well, that is my hope and my thinking and my personal experience. So I’m really excited today, Michael, to have Tom Lee joining us. And I will out myself and say that the conversations I have with Tom really do illuminate things in education for me. And so I’m so grateful when he agreed to come on the podcast. He’s not our typical guest because he’s actually a physician and an entrepreneur who has built multiple ventures that sit at the intersection of tech, care delivery and system redesign. He co-founded Epocrates, one of the earliest and most widely used mobile reference tools for clinicians. He then founded One Medical, which is a tech enabled primary care network. And he’s currently the founder and leader of Galileo, which is a value oriented technology powered multi specialty care model.

And it’s designed to improve quality, lower costs and expand access across populations. We’re going to get into all of that. I will also say that Tom is quite an amazing consumer of education. He’s got a BA from Yale and MD from University of Washington, an MBA from Stanford, and completed his training to become board certified as an internist at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. And while all of that is super impressive, what I love about Tom is how he thinks about healthcare, the clarity of his vision and the mission that I, I think he lives his life by. And so every time we talk, I learn something. Tom, I’m really excited to learn more today. Thank you for joining us.

Tom Lee

Yeah, no, it’s great to be on and great to connect here together. I feel like we always have great conversations and it’s exciting to share them with a broader audience and see where the worlds meet. I was exactly thinking that as you’re reading my bio. I’m unrelated to the industry per se, but I’m a very avid consumer. Unintentionally, my parents would say over, over educated. But, yes, I am happy to be here. So thank you.

Diane Tavenner

Tom, I found this quote that’s attributed to you that really resonated with me, and I thought we’d start here. And the quote is, as a young physician in training, I was like, I don’t want to practice in any of these broken models. I had worked in almost every environment, but the care model just didn’t make any sense. And when I read that, it literally is how I felt as a young teacher. And so maybe let’s just start there. How would you describe the problem when you were at that point, and what did you perceive as broken? And we’ll get into how that then creates your journey forward.