AI with Ethics: Dr Harvey Castro on the Future of Healthcare Innovation
Dr Harvey Castro, also known as #DrGPT, is a renowned emergency medicine physician and AI healthcare innovator. With over 20 years of frontline experience, he is a trusted advisor to global health bodies and the current Chief Medical AI Officer at Helpp.ai.
A keynote speaker with The Champions Speakers Agency, Harvey is known for his practical insights on integrating AI into clinical practice — with a strong focus on innovation, ethics, and real-world impact.
In this exclusive interview, he explores how businesses and healthcare leaders can adopt AI in ways that are both effective and ethically sound.
Q: How can companies ensure their AI adoption strategies are both innovative and ethical?
Harvey Castro: “The way companies can really use and leverage AI – we need to know the good, the bad, and, I jokingly say, the unknown.
For example, if I’m implementing AI into my organisation, there are things that we need to know. Obviously, the governance: what is that data made of? Is it biased? Is it really addressing what you’re trying to do?
Case in point: I was in Germany at a dermatology conference, giving a talk about how AI helps with dermatology. And then I realised the data in the textbooks are of a certain population. The physicians are being taught a certain population; therefore, the AI is being taught a certain population, overall studies. That’s creating bias.
Not to say it may not diagnose that person – let’s say, of a different race – but it may not, because it has never seen it. And so, that’s one important thing: that when we’re implementing AI, we need to see is it biased? And is it going to be working for the goal?
The second thing is that it’s a team approach in healthcare. We need doctors, we need obviously patients, we need the C-Suite, we need everybody on the front lines to really understand the problem and really address it with AI. If we don’t, that AI may build something that it’s not intended for, or that us on the front lines don’t care for. We need to make sure it matches.
The third, and I think this is so important, we must integrate the culture of AI. And I know it’s scary, and I get it. But this is why I love giving these talks. It’s the good, the bad, and the unknown. That way we’re prepared for what the future looks like.
And the last, not many people know about this, but there’s something called AI drift. Think of it this way: today the AI is doing what you and I want for our company, and it’s doing it correctly.
But with time, that AI model starts to drift, and as it starts to drift, it no longer does what it was intended for. We need to have the right people, that team approach. Like they say, it takes a village, to make sure that we correctly do this the right way.”
Q: What are the biggest misconceptions about artificial intelligence in business?
Harvey Castro: “When I think of the common misconceptions, when I literally go around the world speaking about AI and healthcare, the number one I hear is: ‘AI is going to replace humans’.
And I totally understand that, but I want you to think outside the box. See, I did a TED talk about the five senses and how AI can augment them. And here’s what I want you to understand – AI can actually augment my senses.
You see, if I’m trying to diagnose you, I’m limited to what my eyes see, hear, touch, taste, smell. But if I use AI to augment my horizons, to see outside of what I can literally see, then I can take better care of you.
Let me give you an example on the vision portion. There’s AI right now that – this camera feed will let me know if you’re a pre-diabetic. That’s one way of AI. If I’m doing a telemedicine conference with you – being able to tell me, ‘Hey, your patient has pre-diabetes. You may need to screen for that’.
Another quick example – I’m getting older. I don’t hear as well as I used to. And if I’m listening to your heart, I’m limited by what my human ears can hear. But if I’m leveraging AI to hear things outside of what physically I can even hear, now I’m able to hear things that maybe I can diagnose you with: early heart disease.
See, here are quick examples of how people are misconceiving how AI works. The other is: ‘Oh, AI is just for tech companies. I’m not in tech, I’m out’. Well, unfortunately, or fortunately, AI is in everything. And we need to accept this and again, learn the good, the bad, and the unknown so we know how to integrate this into our business.”
Q: How can AI services reduce burnout among professionals?
Harvey Castro: “I love the 3 Ds in AI and let me go over each one of them.
See, as a doctor we can burn out, and as an ER doctor, I can say we can burn out quickly, especially when working 24/7 in the two-in-the-morning days. I want to sleep, and I know I’m working in the middle of the night.
The first D: dull documentation. I hate the paperwork. But again, when we talk about using AI to leverage this conversation that we’re having, and I’m documenting everything. How nice. That’s one less thing.
I have some doctors that I’ve managed, and unfortunately, they’ve stayed at work two to three hours after, just doing the documentation. They’ve actually come to the office on their day off to finish documentation. That should not happen. Another reason why they burn out.
Second is dirty bureaucracy. Having the AI help us through the workflow helps us not have to deal with that.
The third D is that data is heavy. Pattern recognition, there’s so much information. Example: as an ER doctor, patients come in and they literally will bring me a laundry list of all of their history from when they were born till today and say: ‘Here you go’.
That’s so much information. And not that I don’t want to go through it, but unfortunately, I have so many patients that are literally dying in front of me. I need to be able to go through all that information.
But if I have AI to find patterns that I can’t see or find things in the data that I didn’t realise was there, now I’m giving the best care. And what matters the most is patients.”
This exclusive interview with Dr Harvey Castro was conducted by Mark Matthews of The Motivational Speakers Agency.
The post AI with Ethics: Dr Harvey Castro on the Future of Healthcare Innovation appeared first on European Business & Finance Magazine.
