At the recent FOH Summit in Los Angeles, longtime FOH member Steven Klasko led one of the most talked-about sessions of the program. Part fireside chat, part DJ set, part speculative theater, the session, Swifties, Startups, and the Singularity, used humor and holography to explore a serious question: how do we build a healthcare system that is technologically advanced and deeply human?
Dancing with the Singularity: What the Future of Health Really Demands – By Dr. Steven Klasko, Executive in Resident, General Catalyst
Klasko opened by introducing a holographic version of himself from the year 2035 – Chief Digital Health Officer to “President Taylor Swift.” The conceit was playful, but the critique was sharp. Looking back at 2025, the future Klasko described a healthcare system drowning in disconnected tools: “Healthcare stayed broken, fragmented, expensive, and inequitable… CEOs were spending billions trying to piece together random apps like mismatched LEGO bricks.” His AI counterpart was even more blunt, interrupting to note that clinicians needed “nine different passwords just to start their day” and that early AI systems were “hallucinating medication dosages.”
The turning point, according to Klasko, was abandoning isolated point solutions in favor of integrated platforms, and abandoning the fear narrative around AI. “AI didn’t replace healthcare workers,” he said. “Healthcare professionals who embraced and understood AI collaboration replaced those who didn’t.”
To frame what did work, Klasko introduced the “ERAS tour” of healthcare transformation:
- Empathy – seeing people as people, not patients
- Radical collaboration – across payers, providers, and tech
- AI and Access – ambient intelligence that supports, not replaces, humans
- Swift care – healthcare that is tailored and timely
“The singularity,” his future self argued, “isn’t something that happens to healthcare. It’s something healthcare gets to create.”
That theme carried into the conversation with Michael Avaltroni, President of Fairleigh Dickinson University, who described how higher education must change to support this future. “We are built on an 18th-century agrarian model in a 21st-century world,” he said, noting that medical knowledge refreshes every 74 days while curricula remain frozen in four-year blocks.
Avaltroni’s answer is a rebuilt educational engine: the Humanics model, which combines technological literacy, data literacy, and human literacy, with human connection at the center. He described five pillars that future clinicians will need precisely because AI cannot replicate them: “empathy… agility… culturally competent… creativity… and… critical thinking and judgment.” The throughline was clear: technology is essential, but education must train people to use it in service of humanity.
Klasko then turned to Dr. Brendan Carr, CEO of Mount Sinai Health System, to address what it takes to operationalize this future inside a complex academic medical center. Carr described AI not as a replacement for clinicians but as a permanent co-pilot. Carr outlined a deliberate strategy: not just building tools, but stress-testing the legal, workflow, and accountability scaffolding that will determine whether AI improves care or adds risk. “Technology is not going to be the challenge,” he said. “The challenge is going to be the legal and regulatory battles.” His north star is redefining “top of license” – moving clinicians away from pajama-time admin burden and back to what medicine is meant to be.
In the end, beneath the holograms, pop culture references, and DJ metaphors, the message was unmistakable. The more powerful our technology becomes, the more essential human skills are. Or, as Klasko’s future self reminded the room: “The winners aren’t the people or the AI. It’s the people who learn to dance with the AI.”
