On/Offcall: Dr. Eric Topol Shares Why Doctors Should Not Fear AI (And How to Use It To Their Advantage)

Welcome back to On/Offcall!

It’s been an incredible year of guests on How I Doctor, and this week, it was an absolute honor to welcome the legendary Dr. Eric Topol to the show!

Eric is a world-renowned cardiologist, bestselling author, and digital health pioneer, and for decades, he’s been ahead of almost every major medical shift – predicting some the biggest breakthroughs in modern medicine. Now he’s sounding the alarm on what physicians need to understand (and do) in order to truly lead when it comes to AI.

The episode is a true masterclass on how clinicians can help shape the future of our profession. Together, he and Dr. Graham Walker unpacked:

🤖 How multimodal AI could finally shift medicine from treatment to prevention
📉 Why trust in doctors is collapsing despite the historic pace of breakthroughs
🧠 Why the immune system may be the real driver of aging and disease
🔥 And why doctors shouldn’t fear AI, but learn to wield it to their advantage

Listen to the full episode on Offcall

And join the conversation on social media by commenting on Graham’s feed here!

Know someone who would benefit from joining us? Help us grow our tent by forwarding this newsletter to your physician colleagues and subscribing here.

More 🔥 Reactions to Our 2025 Physicians AI Report!

Last week, we released our 2025 Physicians AI report, and the reactions continue to pour in! Huge thanks to Ethan Mollick (here), Joshua Liu (here), Ethan Goh (here), and every single person who’s read, downloaded and shared the Physicians AI Report! It’s been exciting to see the conversation and impact the report has generated.

ICYMI, download the report here

Best Things to Read This Week

Catalyzing Health AI by Fixing Payment Systems (NEJM)
Examining the reimbursement landscape for health AI, including payment barriers and propsed policy reforms. From Narges Razavian, Prem Batchu-Green, Vikas Chowdhry, Olivier Elemento, Pranav Rajpurkar,, Suchi Saria, Nigam Shah, and Eric J. Topol.

Big Bump in Concierge, Direct Primary Care in Recent Years (Medpage Today)
A first look at a large national sample of concierge and direct primary care practices for future work to build on.

Parallel pressures: the common roots of doctor bullshit and large language model hallucinations (BMJ)
The drive that leads doctors to make unfounded statements are mirrored in the forces that cause LLMs to generate false information. From Roberto Correa Soto, Liam McCoy, Camilo Perdomo-Luna, Jennifer Ziegler, Luis Eduardo Pino, Andrés Rico, Valentina Velasco-Muñoz, Adelaida Uribe-Castaño, Adam Rodman, and Leo Anthony Celi.

🚨Featured Job Alert: Calling All Medical Directors!

From our friends at Tembo Health, the company redefining how dementia care is delivered to older adults and their families! Tembo is hiring a Chief Medical Officer responsible for clinical leadership, fostering superior quality patient care, and developing and ensuring strategic goals are met. Here’s the job description for the Medical Director role. To learn more about all open roles and opportunities at the company, reach out directly to CEO and physician (!) Anurag Gupta here.

Highlights From Our Community

Each week, we celebrate career milestones, launches, & other goings-on in the physician community. Have something to promote? Reply and we’ll feature you.

👉 Thanks for sharing, Pranav Rajpurkar
Co-founder of a2z Radiology AI Pranav Rajpurkar shared a new essay series entitled “The First Decade of Research” reflecting on what someone had told him on day one after doing AI research for 10 years. Read it here.

✅ Strong work, David Fajgenbaum
Dr. David Fajgenbaum’s TED Talk about his work repurposing drugs at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Every Cure was featured as one of the 3 “most unforgettable talks from 2025.” Learn more and check out the talk here!

🙌 Thanks for sharing, Christina Jenny Greenfield
Dr. Christina Greenfield opened up about the realities of being a woman in medicine after 6 months pregnant in orthopedic surgery (also shouting out Dr. Santoshi Billakota and Dr. Joyce Park). See her heartfelt reflections here.

🙌 Also thank you for sharing, Arti Thangudu
Dr. Arti Thangudu shared her own reflections on the challenges of being married to another physician and her advice on how to balance family and career. Watch it here.

🙏 Thanks for your important voice, Frances Mei Hardin
Dr. Frances Hardin reflected on the different between Gen Z and older physicians and why the younger generation treating the profession more like the service industry is a useful framing. Watch it here.

👏 Great news, Christopher Longhurst
Dr. Christopher Longhurst announced that Seattle Children’s now offers rapid genomic testing to children admitted in any hospital unit – a new standard of care driven by research. Learn more here.

😮 Interesting data, Armen Asatryan
Dr. Armen Asatryan shared several Crain's Chicago Business journal charts comparing compensation of top hospital executives to top doctors, and it’s eye-opening. See the charts here.

🙌 Thanks for all your work, Adam McCall
Dr. Adam McCall posted a heartfelt essay on social media about being a primary care doctor and trying to keep his practice alive despite a system that makes it harder every single year. Read it here.

📢 Call for speakers! Shikha Jain
Dr. Shikha Jain, leader of the Women In Medicine Summit posted a call for speakers for the 2026 conference in Chicago on a range of topics including closing the gender gap in medicine, driving innovation in women’s health, mentoring the next generation of leaders, and more. See more and apply here.

✅ Important results, Mike Senter-Zapata
Dr. Mike Senter-Zapata shared very positive findings from the past several years of clinical decision support research between Mass General Brigham, the Healthcare Transformation Lab @ Massachusetts General Hospital, and Avo. See the findings here.

Be Sure to Sign Up for Offcall!

At Offcall, we believe physicians deserve to be heard, valued, and treated fairly. Everything we do is driven by our commitment to empowering doctors with accurate, reliable, and trustworthy data — to advocate confidently for themselves and ensure their compensation truly reflects their worth.

Learn more and sign up here

Did Someone Share On/Offcall With You?

Thanks for reading. Each week, we bring the latest news, information, financial and career tips, and dose of inspiration to your inbox. Our community is growing fast! Join us by subscribing to this newsletter. And please be sure to forward this newsletter to your colleagues and friends. Thank you!

Subscribe