For a recent interview, we caught up with Harvey Castro, AI expert and AI advisor to the Singaporean Ministry of Health, to learn more about current projects, learnings, and predictions for the future of AI.
Harvey began by introducing himself, telling us about his current role as chief medical AI officer for Helpp.ai, and his interest in creating AI companies to address specific pain points in healthcare. With over 20 years of experience as a doctor in emergency medicine, Harvey outlined how he focused on combining those two worlds, setting him up as a respected international expert on AI in healthcare, and leading to his production of a Ted Talk on How AI and Humans Can Revolutionise Medicine Together.
Harvey’s entrepreneurial spirit even led to him setting up his own healthcare system, which he grew “all the way from zero to 350 employees across eight locations”. That included having his own staffing and billing companies, and allowed him insight into the C-suite and “the biggest pain points” from a business point of view, to compliment his experience as a clinician on the frontline.
The idea for one of the first apps he created, IV Meds, also came from his frontline experience, Harvey told us. “I was coding a patient in the emergency room, and asked the nurse to start a drug, which took her about eight minutes by the time she got the textbook, she went through it, she got the calculator and verified my doses. In the app I created, you tap it three times, it gives you the dose, and you’re away taking care of your patient. And it went viral.”
Venturing into health tech
“By 2030, the world will face a shortage of 10 million healthcare workers,” Harvey explained. “That’s why I see health tech as a magic bullet to bridge this gap.” He pointed to the Apple Watch as an example of proactive care, saying: “Imagine harnessing all that data to spot risks and intervene before patients even realise they’re unwell. It’s about moving from reactive to proactive care.”
AI also offers many opportunities for patient engagement and communication, Harvey considered, noting differences which may exist in the ways health messaging is communicated, and the potential for AI to help clinicians tailor their messages to patients. “I could tailor it to have a British accent, or if someone’s hard of hearing I could show the AI using sign language, really personalising their care. That’s how I see AI – let’s use these tools to help humanity,” he said.
A project Harvey talked about getting the most enjoyment out of is around using AI to improve communication with younger patients. “I can take long and boring discharge instructions, feed them into AI, and get it to create me a colouring book,” he shared. “Kids love it, they understand it, and they start realising things they normally wouldn’t if I put it in text. For older kids, we use comic strips for communication because teenagers respond better to that.”
Opportunities for digital and AI to make an impact
When asked about the opportunities that arise from the implementation of digital and AI, Harvey explained, “I see predictive analytics being huge”. He went on to give the example of how predictive analytics can help identify new strains of the flu or similar viruses, in order to catch an outbreak early.
Harvey also explained further benefits of predictive analytics in a more administrative sense, especially when it comes to pre-planning. “If I know there’s an outbreak, I know I need to get certain supplies and medicine in place ready, or call in extra doctors and staff before the outbreak hits us,” he said.
Discussing some of the apps he’s developed during his career, Harvey mentioned how focused he was on pain points and finding ways to address issues in clinical care. One of the outcomes from this came in the form of his stroke scale app. “We needed to know how bad your stroke was to help us treat you in the right way, so I created an application for the stroke scale to help with that,” he told us.
Another pain point Harvey wanted to address was the way physicians or healthcare professional might sometimes forget to update their credentials due to the busy daily landscape of their job roles. With this in mind, Harvey created an app that reminded physicians to update any certificates before their expiry date.
Suggesting that the best approach to app development in healthcare involves finding something you’re truly passionate about, Harvey said: “When you’re passionate about something, that’s what pushes you to think outside the box. If you break that mould then all of a sudden you find a solution.” Having someone “on the inside”, or on the frontline, familiar with the problem you’re trying to solve, is essential, he went on, “because programmers don’t see that, and they don’t see how the app is going to actually be used within a clinician’s role”.
Singapore’s digital transformation in health
Part of Harvey’s role with the Singapore Ministry of Health involves having conversations about addressing certain healthcare problems and looking at ways to leverage AI to make improvements. “It’s such a blessing,” he said of the role, “because they outline the laws and the sandbox we have to play in, and let me play AI doctor in terms of developing new ways that AI can help us tackle a certain problem they come to me with.”
He outlined some of the key ways Singapore has addressed digital transformation in health, stating: “The government is leading when it comes to backing AI in their healthcare system. They’re so united when moving things forward. The fact that they even have an advisory board for this particular problem, made me excited. That’s being progressive and thinking of the future. I feel so lucky to be a part of this group.”
In Singapore, a recent government initiative has also announced that “the country will pay for anyone over the age of 40 to be retrained in AI”, according to Harvey, “and I thought wow, what a leadership – if they see something they like, and want to push that throughout the whole country, they can literally do that”. This approach tends to make Singapore more “innovation friendly”, he considered, “for innovators like me to come in with their ideas”.
When it comes to the future of AI in healthcare, Harvey mentioned Elon Musk’s plans to introduce robots into the health workforce. “Robots will be one of the biggest changes in hospitals, starting from 2026/2027”, he predicted, “and that will be impactful in a number of ways, including helping retain an ageing healthcare workforce, who may start to struggle with the physical capacity required to move patients and that kind of thing. That might push them to retire early. With humanoid robots, the robot could do the heavy lifting for them, taking that physical strain away from physicians, and hopefully helping that workforce stay in their role for longer.”
Harvey also sees the potential for “AI to be in the eyes of robots”, enabling robots in the health field to pick up on details physicians might miss, take in information from a consultation, or even offer ideas for “next steps” in a patient’s treatment. “The big picture I see is robots combined with AI in healthcare,” Harvey continued.
Final thoughts on AI and digital transformation
Harvey shared a few final thoughts with us on the topic of AI and wider digital transformation, including how AI and digital health may differ for each country. “I’m in the US, using data from the US, so the way we educate our physicians and healthcare system may not apply in the UK or other parts of the world. It’s important that we have our own models, created by our own institutes, with our own local data; that way it’s really representing the population,” he said.
Talking about concerns health professionals might have about AI replacing them in their roles, Harvey said: “You’re not going to lose your job, because that human touch you bring is too important. Let’s look at the repetitive tasks or the harder tasks that don’t make sense and put that into AI – that way you get more time to spend with your patients.”
We’d like to thank Harvey for his time in sharing these insights with us. Please feel free to check out his Ted Talk to find out more about his take on the future of healthcare.
