Paths of Curiosity in an AI World: AI in Healthcare - People, Data, & Decisions with Natalie Pageler, MD

AI in Healthcare: Designing for the Patients Who Can't Speak for Themselveswith Dr. Natalie Pageler, MDThe choices we make for kids today echo for a lifetime. Dr. Natalie Pageler uses AI to help doctors notice the moments that could change a child's life — for better or worse.In this episode of *Paths of Curiosity in an AI World*, we continue our AI and Healthcare mini-series with Dr. Natalie Pageler, a board-certified pediatrician, pediatric intensivist, and clinical informaticist at Stanford Medicine. As the inaugural Division Chief of Clinical Informatics, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, and Associate Dean for Maternal and Child Health, Dr. Pageler has spent more than a decade designing safe, ethical, and meaningful uses of AI for children and families — a challenge that looks very different when your patients are growing, changing, and often unable to speak for themselves.Dr. Pageler shares what drew her from the bedside to the system level, and why the transition from caring for one patient at a time to shaping how all pediatricians practice felt like the natural extension of the same mission. She walks us through the unique challenges of deploying AI in pediatric care — from smaller and more fragmented data, to models never tested on children, to the ethical stakes of interventions whose effects can ripple across an entire lifetime.We also explore the invisible work behind any successful health technology: the people, process, and workflow decisions that determine whether a tool helps or harms. And we dig into one of the clearest ethical tensions in AI healthcare today — how the same predictive model can either overbook clinics at the expense of vulnerable families, or proactively remove the barriers keeping those same families from getting care.In this episode, we explore:- Why AI in pediatrics requires different data, different models, and different stakeholders- How automation bias and automation neglect show up in clinical practice — and how to teach around them- What clinical informatics is and why it's one of medicine's newest — and most important — subspecialties- How a predictive model for missed appointments can either deepen or reduce health inequity depending on how it's used- What future pediatricians will need to know that wasn't taught a generation agoThis episode is a reminder that in healthcare, the most powerful uses of AI aren't about replacing clinical judgment. They're about giving every child — regardless of circumstance — a better shot at a healthier life.Resources:1. Future Jobs Map: https://pathsofcuriosity.com/Future_Jobs_Map_-_AI_in_Healthcare.htm2. Student Self-Discovery - What's Your Spark :https://pathsofcuriosity.com/whats_your_spark_quiz.htmlPaths of Curiosity in an AI World Exploring tomorrow’s careers through the lens of AI Follow us: @pathsofcuriosityWebsite: https://pathsofcuriosity.com/Youtube: youtube.com/@PathsofCuriosityX: https://x.com/PathsCuriosityLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paths-of-curiosity-in-an-ai-world-2117803aa/