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    Digital Technology and Social Technology: Two Approaches to Reshaping Healthcare

    Expert Perspectives · Waqas Haque, MD, MPH · 2025-08-13

    In an era increasingly defined by rapid technological advancements, the landscape of healthcare is undergoing a profound transformation. While much attention is rightly given to groundbreaking digital innovations like artificial intelligence (AI) revolutionizing drug discovery, it’s equally crucial to recognize the enduring power of “social technologies”—those human-centric approaches that improve outcomes through structured support. In this edition of The Way Ahead: The Convergence of Technology and Cancer Care, Waqas Haque, MD, MPH, delves into both facets—how cutting-edge AI is reshaping the pharmaceutical industry and, in parallel, how seemingly simple yet profoundly effective social interventions continue to play a vital role in patient care.

    The Promise of AI in Drug Discovery

    The use of AI has already impacted the pharmaceutical industry by contributing to early-phase discovery and phase 1 clinical trials. According to a study published in 2024 titled “How successful are AI-discovered drugs in clinical trials?” it was found in a small sample of phase 1 trials that AI-discovered molecules developed by AI-native biotech companies had a trial success rate of 80% to 90%, which were substantially higher than historical estimates of 40% to 50%. This indicates that AI is highly capable of designing or identifying molecules with drug-like properties.

    The paper was co-authored by a team at Boston Consulting Group, who put out another report identifying several key areas where AI is already making an impact:

    • Understanding disease: AI is being used to identify and validate new targets for drug discovery efforts.
    • Small molecule design and optimization: AI helps in identifying promising compounds and optimizing them for favorable properties.
    • Vaccines and antibody design: AI applications are being used for the discovery and design of vaccines, with a focus on mRNA-based vaccines, and for optimizing antibody structures.
    • Safety and toxicity: AI is employed to evaluate the safety profile of new therapeutic agents.

    Despite this progress, barriers to adoption remain, including a lack of trust in the value of AI and challenges related to data quality, maturity, and standardization. However, most AI users and non-users in the industry expect AI to drive significant, transformative impact in drug discovery over the next five years.

    Human Oversight is Still Important

    Google introduced Med-Gemini, a family of AI models fine-tuned for medical applications, achieving impressive benchmark results including 91.1% accuracy on medical licensing exam questions. The models demonstrate advanced multimodal capabilities, interpreting 2D and 3D medical imaging, generating radiology reports, and even predicting health outcomes from genomic data.

    However, a significant error highlighted the technology’s limitations. In demonstrating Med-Gemini-3D’s ability to analyze head computed tomography (CT) scans, the AI incorrectly identified “basilar ganglia” instead of “basal ganglia”—a concerning mistake that went unnoticed by Google researchers until flagged by an external neurologist. While Google dismissed this as a “misspelling,” medical professionals view it as evidence of AI’s potential for dangerous errors. Med-Gemini’s capabilities in pathology, radiology, and genomics analysis could offer valuable clinical support and report generation. However, the basilar ganglia incident underscores the critical need for rigorous validation and human oversight before deploying AI in clinical settings.

    The CHALLENGE Trial: Exercise as a Social Technology

    While much of our blog has focused on cutting-edge software and drug development, it’s important to remember that not all technologies are digital. The landmark CHALLENGE trial for colon cancer showcased the power of a “social technology.” This international, randomized controlled trial presented at ASCO this year demonstrated that a structured exercise program, with guidance from a trainer, significantly improved survival for patients with high-risk stage II and stage III colon cancer.

    Participants in the exercise group had a 28% lower risk of cancer recurrence and a 37% lower risk of death compared to those who received standard health education materials. This study highlights that non-pharmacological, behavioral interventions can have a profound impact, sometimes rivaling that of conventional therapies, by providing a form of structured support crucial for patient well-being and outcomes.

    About Dr. Haque

    Waqas Haque, MD, MPH, is a Hematology/Oncology Fellow at the University of Chicago. He recently completed his Internal Medicine Residency at New York University (NYU) in a Clinical Investigator Track. Dr. Haque has balanced his patient care work with a variety of research projects. During his fellowship training at the University of Chicago, he plans to further his work in innovative clinical trial design, value-based care delivery to cancer patients, and clinical investigation.