AI in Healthcare — Gabriel Wardi, MD

AI in Healthcare: Catching the Patients Who Slip Through the Cracks with Dr. Gabriel Wardi In emergency medicine, minutes matter, and some of the most dangerous conditions do not announce themselves clearly. In this episode of Paths of Curiosity in an AI World, we continue our AI and Healthcare mini-series with Dr. Gabriel Wardi, an emergency and critical care physician at UC San Diego Health and a leader in applying machine learning to high-stakes clinical care. Dr. Wardi works at the front lines of medicine, where chaos, speed, and uncertainty are part of everyday life, and where AI has the potential to save lives when used thoughtfully. Dr. Wardi shares how working in the emergency department reshaped the way he thinks about healthcare problems beyond individual patients, and why sepsis, a condition that affects millions worldwide but often goes unrecognized, became a focus of his work. He walks us through the real-world implementation of a deep learning sepsis prediction model that gave clinicians hours of lead time and contributed to a 17% reduction in sepsis-related mortality at UC San Diego Health. We also explore where AI truly helps clinicians today, where it can be risky, and why AI must remain a tool rather than a replacement for clinical reasoning. From early diagnosis and patient flow to ambient AI scribes and future triage systems, this conversation shows what it actually takes to bring AI into real emergency care. In this episode, we explore: Why sepsis is so hard to catch and how AI can help identify it earlier How machine learning models work inside a real emergency department What makes clinicians trust or ignore AI alerts Where AI improves efficiency and where it can be dangerous How students can explore careers at the intersection of AI, medicine, and patient impact This episode is a reminder that AI’s biggest promise in healthcare is not flashy technology. It is giving clinicians the right information at the right moment, so fewer patients slip through the cracks. Resources: 1. Future Jobs Map: https://pathsofcuriosity.com/Future_J... 2. Student Self-Discovery - What's Your Spark : https://pathsofcuriosity.com/whats_yo... Paths of Curiosity in an AI World — Exploring tomorrow's careers through the lens of AI Follow us at: @PathsofCuriosity⁩ Website: https://pathsofcuriosity.com/ Youtube:    / @pathsofcuriosity   X: https://x.com/PathsCuriosity LinkedIn:   / paths-of-curiosity-in-an-ai-world-2117803aa