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From Utopia to Reality: Three Citizen Facing AI-Driven Innovations for Health for All and for Future Generations

Being Human for a Better Tomorrow in the Age of AI

  • November 1, 2024
  • 21st edition
  • 10th in Vol 2
Society From Utopia to Reality Three Citizen Facing AI Driven Innovations for Health for All and for Future Generations

Historical Context and Current Challenges

In the 19th century, the average lifespan of an English laborer was just 16 years, or 36 years for the gentry. Today, it has more than doubled to 82 years. We have deep understanding of critical illnesses, cures for life-threatening diseases like cancer, and well-established private and public health infrastructure.

Utopia in health terms refers to an imagined society where optimal health and well-being are universally achieved. In this ideal society, everyone enjoys perfect physical, mental, and emotional health. Diseases are eradicated or effectively managed, and preventive care is so advanced that illnesses are largely avoided. Healthcare is accessible, equitable, and of the highest quality, ensuring that all needy individuals receive the care they need without financial or social barriers.

But despite these advances, we are still far from achieving true “health utopia,” where healthcare is accessible, equitable, and affordable for all.

We face new and enormous challenges.

1. Serious Staffing and Financial Resource Crunch

“By 2026, healthcare will face a shortfall of over 4 million workers, growing to 10 million by 2030. Rising costs add pressure, with U.S. health expenditures alone projected to surge from $4.8 trillion in 2023 to $7.7 trillion by 2032.”

Driven by ageing population and increased share of government funding, healthcare spending is rising ahead of GDP and general inflation growth indices.

With shortage of doctors, nurses, paramedics, mental health professionals, rising medical costs and government health care budget constraints, funding and consumption balance is becoming harder by the year.

2. Rising Mistrust, Conflict of Interest and Lack of Transparency

Public trust in healthcare has eroded significantly.

A survey led by a team from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School showed that the proportion of US adults reporting “a lot of trust” in physicians and hospitals decreased from 71.5% in April 2020 to a low of 40.1% in January 2024.

An analysis of responses to open-ended questions found that the lowest levels of trust pointed to the idea that physicians and hospitals favored financial motives over patient care, poor quality of care and negligence, and influence of external entities and agendas as primary reasons.

With easy ubiquitous Google search and 24 x 7 news, we are information rich and trust poor. Faced with an illness or a medical decision, we struggle to find credible, unbiased, trusted sources. Even when we do find, the trust is based on source credibility and cannot be backed by data or self understanding.

3. Lack of Equity and Access to Health

Consider the following data from McKinsey Health Institute:

  1. There is a 7 year difference in life expectancy among 30 year olds between highest and lowest levels of education in OECD countries

  2. 4x more fatality for Black residents (3.5X for Hispanics) compared to White residents from COVID

  3. There is 50% higher likelihood for women to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack;

  4. 8x higher infant mortality rate between low and high income countries in Asia and Africa;

  5. Even today, 3.2 billion people globally do not have access to any healthcare within one hour by foot.
Where and what class you are born matters even now when it comes to health, and all but the rich are one emergency away from unaffordable healthcare.

The 21st Century Poses New Societal Health Questions

  1. In a resource crunched future how can we transform outcome efficiencies adding proactive preventative to personalized citizen health assistance?

  2. How can we build trust and transparency between citizens on diagnosis, treatment medical staff, and hospitals ?

  3. How can we enhance equity and access to critical health to the most needy with support from those who can without impacting generational wealth?

Three AI-Driven Innovations for Health for All and Future Generations

Here are three citizen-facing AI-driven innovations that address precisely these questions:
  1. Citizen Florence – Imagine having a intelligent health assistant—your own digital ‘Florence Nightingale’—offering preventative and care advice and guidance ahead of any medical consultation. By focusing on preventive care, Citizen Florence aims to keep people healthier while reducing the need for crisis interventions.

  2. Looking Glass- With Looking Glass, an open AI-driven health data platform, users can access trusted transparent information about healthcare providers, treatment options, costs, and outcomes, helping them make informed choices with full visibility.”

  3. Rawls MaxiMin Health Exchange – AI driven platform to identify and support the most needy for quality care to lead a life of dignity and responsibility, with direct benefit transfer from those who can, in a way which does not impact generational wealth, to be sustainable.

In the next three editions, we will explore each of these ideas in greater detail.

Data ethics, security and privacy will be foundational to these initiatives. We will also explore how John Rawls’ 20th century philosophy and the five-fold path—informed consent, representative datasets, bias correction, periodic reviews, and building consensus trust—can guide us.

If we do this right, AI-driven initiatives may get us to a health utopia, perhaps in three decades.

Attention and Support is a Catalyst

What we take for granted today was based on a set of ideas and people who decided to do things differently.

Take Democracy, for instance. While not the inventor of democracy, Cleisthenes is often considered the “father of Athenian democracy.”

His reforms around 508 BCE transformed Athens:

  • He reorganized the citizen body into 10 new tribes, breaking down old aristocratic power structures.
  • He created the Council of 500, giving more citizens a voice in governance.
  • He introduced ostracism, allowing citizens to vote to exile overly powerful individuals.
The changes Cleisthenes implemented had far-reaching effects:
  • They laid the groundwork for the golden age of Athenian democracy under Pericles.
  • They influenced political thought throughout the ancient world and beyond.
  • They provided a model that would inspire democratic movements millennia later.

Cleisthenes gained success and shaped world history for millennia to come because he got the timing right—acting during a time of political instability, he got popular support from common people, and his thoughtful structure made it hard to revert back to old systems.

Our healthcare future depends on today’s actions. Like Cleisthenes reshaped Athens with timely reforms, we have a window to transform healthcare for generations to come. COVID showed us the urgent need for change, and now AI offers the tools to make it possible.

Let’s explore solutions together. If you like the explorations (outline below), please subscribe to the newsletter, like, share, comment, and connect.

To health for all and for generations.

Best wishes

Select Quotes

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
– Karl Marx
"A society is just when it maximizes the minimum level of well-being for its members."
– John Rawls
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
– Margaret Mead
"Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come."
— Victor Hugo

II. Questioning / Asking

Good conversations flow from well‑sequenced questions—topical, simple, coherent, cohesive.
LLM Conversation Example 1
Q: What are empirical judgments?

A: Empirical judgments are based on observation, experience, or experimentation.
Q: What are moral judgments?

A: Moral judgments are based on ethical principles and values.
“AI is a language. Treat it like one: practice, iterate, and mind your grammar prompts, assumptions, and verification.”
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