AI in Biomedical R&D and Healthcare: Breakthrough, Band-Aid, or Existential Risk?

Artificial intelligence has the potential to reshape the biomedical and health ecosystem, from drug discovery and translational research to public health analytics and clinical care delivery. In this discussion, Dr. Monarez examines the expanding role of artificial intelligence across healthcare and the life sciences through three complementary lenses: breakthrough, band-aid, and existential risk.
Dr. Monarez will explore areas where AI is enabling meaningful advances in biomedical R&D and clinical practice, including large-scale analysis of biological data, new approaches to therapeutic discovery, and decision support tools that augment human expertise. She will also consider how AI may be functioning as a band-aid within the life sciences R&D pipeline and within existing healthcare systems, masking underlying erosion of capabilities and creating a false sense of improvement.
Finally, Dr. Monarez examines longer-term systemic risks associated with the widespread adoption of AI in biomedical R&D and health systems, including algorithmic bias, opaque decision processes, data governance challenges, and the growing concentration of digital infrastructure and analytic capabilities within a small number of technology platforms.
By examining AI across the continuum from research to real-world health systems, Dr. Monarez aims to provide a balanced framework for evaluating both the transformative potential and the societal risks of algorithmic technologies in medicine and the life sciences.