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New year, new goals.
As we kick off 2025, Healthcare Brew checked in with leaders from around the healthcare industry to see what they have brewing (ha, get it?) for 2025.
They each shared plans to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies to make care smoother and more accessible.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Chris McKee, SVP and chief strategy and business development officer, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
In 2025, we will focus on responsibly executing our goals for new and improved clinical facilities to meet growing patient demand and for state-of-the-art research facilities that enable breakthrough research discoveries. We’ll work to ensure our plans stay at the leading edge, considering new enabling tools like AI and the latest transformational cancer therapies. Externally, we will continue to deepen the relationships we have with our national partners to provide the highest-quality cancer care and an increasing number of novel clinical trials for patients across the country.
Andrew Trister, chief medical and scientific officer, Verily
In 2025, Verily will continue to focus on the applications of stitching disparate data together, building the AI infrastructure, and demonstrating the value of insights from these data to advance more personalized healthcare. Some focus areas will include launching our next-generation care solution, Lightpath, expanding our research solutions including Verily Workbench, and growing our work on wastewater testing. We will continue advancing our data platform in order to help customers deploy more personalized insights and actions across workflows while offering the governance, auditability, and security that is needed in the healthcare industry.
Brian Evanko, president and CEO of Cigna Healthcare, EVP and CFO, Cigna Group
As I look to 2025, one of the areas I’m focused on in my role is the importance of further leveraging data, analytics, and increasing AI capabilities in order to engage our customers in their own health and access the most effective care. We know that bone and joint pain is a top driver of healthcare spending, with significant growth projected in total hip and knee replacements. We’ve built advanced predictive models to identify, with a high degree of accuracy, customers who have elevated risk for future musculoskeletal surgeries—and we work to connect them with physical therapy and other less invasive treatment. As we look ahead, I’m excited about the possibilities to harness data and insights to expand our leading clinical capabilities into other high-cost areas and ultimately improve the health and vitality of those we serve.