A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future

In A Giant Leap, physician Robert Wachter examines how generative artificial intelligence is transforming healthcare. Drawing on extensive research and more than 100 interviews with pioneers in medicine, technology, policy, and business, Wachter navigates between hype and skepticism to explore AI's potential in a healthcare system facing bureaucratic pressures, rising costs, and clinician burnout. Wachter demonstrates how AI is already being used in hospitals and clinics to draft notes, answer patient questions, recommend treatments, interpret images, and guide surgeries. He acknowledges risks including hallucinations, biases, and misinformation, while also showing how AI can match or sometimes exceed physician performance in areas such as diagnosis and empathy. Beyond the technology itself, Wachter emphasizes the human choices that will shape whether AI becomes beneficial or harmful to healthcare. The book combines clinical perspective, storytelling, and journalistic reporting to provide analysis for healthcare leaders, clinicians, and patients about how AI is changing care delivery.