Episode 257 - Jordan Henry

So, you know, this is such an exciting time in our lives and in, you know, in sort of every respect with this new technology that seems like it's going to revolutionize everything.

You talked a little bit about this light bulb going off when ChatGPT came out and you were reflecting back on how much that would have helped in this sort of remote environment during COVID when you're distributing, you know, you know, ventilators and all these other materials, all this coordination that was necessary.

Talk to me a little bit about that light bulb and like where you think this is going, not just, you know, both in terms of just kind of the general, you know, workplace, but also specifically in the healthcare side.

Yeah, I mean, so, you know, specifically for an example of how, you know, we could have applied that during the pandemic, you know, like I was saying, there's a lot of supplies.

So whether that be durable medical equipment, face masks, gloves, whatever it may be, you're dealing with so many different streams of supply chains.

So you may not be getting all of that from one vendor or all of that from one region.

So you need a higher level of management for what that is coming in, not only inventory management, But burn rate, and then what's your back supply? So do you have, you know, from that vendor, 10 more weeks of whatever that is, right? Let's say medical gloves.

So then you implement a tool like ChatGPT into that framework, and then it acts as your conductor, if you will.

It's a crude way to say it, but, you know, we have...

In emergency management, you may hear this colloquially, but a lot of times we'll say we have a lot of spinning plates in the air and you have to keep going around and make sure they're spinning.

Well, the AI could have kept your plate spinning while you're focused on more traditional, higher level decision making or human in the loop decision making.

And I think, again, that same those same applications apply today because AI isn't or generative AI or the large language models, open models are not ubiquitous in every agency of the government from local to federal.

They're becoming integrated and implemented.

But I don't think they're, you know, they're at the time now when we go, OK, that's our main conductor for this response.

You know, there's still a lot of test trials going on.

So I think AI and healthcare and emergency management and public health is that force multiplier.

A real quick segue, towards the end of the pandemic, all of the CDC Foundation surge workers were let go.

There was about 5,000 of us.

Some did find work with the local or state health department they were working for, but most did not.

So almost everyone was left in the cold, you know, with federal grant money coming in.

So I use that example only to illustrate that AI is your force multiplier.

It's your, you know, your bench, if you will, if using a

sort of excess scalable capacity.

Right.

At the very least, obviously, the capabilities are so much more than that.