A Giant Leap
How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future
ROBERT WACHTER, MD
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.
“The definitive account of AI’s transformation of healthcare … Essential reading.”
—Ethan Mollick,
New York Times bestselling author of Co-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.
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Praise for A Giant Leap
"Patients, [Wachter] contends, will always need a trusted human guide. Readers of his book will be grateful to have found one.”
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“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)
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"... an island of calm and thoughtful commentary in the midst of an exhausting wave of hype.... Highly recommended."
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“An accessible, often fascinating primer on AI tools changing clinical practice—for better or worse… Essential, illuminating reading.”
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“[The 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
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“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
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“A firsthand account of the breathtaking possibilities and sobering challenges of AI in medicine… A Giant Leap is a book that thinks alongside you—and demands that you think back.”
—Sherry Turkle, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and New York Times bestselling author of The Second Self and Reclaiming Conversation
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“Wachter demonstrates his gift for anticipating and digesting the big movements in science and healthcare. A Giant Leap is authoritative, well-researched, and timely, and reads beautifully!”
—Abraham Verghese, author of The Covenant of Water
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“A Giant Leap is a wonderfully engaging, lucid, and timely guide to how AI is transforming healthcare.”
—Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD, Co-director of the Health Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, and bestselling author of Eat Your Ice Cream
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“Tech is the easy part. People, incentives, and workflows are where dreams go to die—or flourish. A Giant Leap masterfully captures these dynamics, delivering this era’s definitive guide to healthcare AI.”
—Vinod Khosla, cofounder of Sun Microsystems and founder of Khosla Ventures
