An audacious vision and actionable roadmap to a future where your health is unified, intelligent, and truly yours
Health is failing and care is fragmenting—and together they're bankrupting America. How do we break through today’s maze of silos and create a single, person-first system that actually delivers health? In Intelligent Health: The Movement to Unify Data, Harness AI, and Empower People to Thrive, physician-executive and global health strategist Dr. Nasim Afsar delivers a bold yet practical blueprint for transforming health and care. Drawing on nearly two decades of leadership at the highest levels—from serving as Chief Health Officer at Oracle to leading billion-dollar health systems—Dr. Afsar shows how we can move from today’s fragmented, reactive model to one that is personalized, predictive, preventive, and participatory.
Intelligent Health makes an uncompromising case that unifying all of your health data, applying intelligence to it, and owning it outright is no longer optional—it's essential to improving outcomes, lowering costs, and restoring humanity to care. Drawing on compelling stories, actionable strategies, and deep expertise—shaped by partnerships with White House and global health agencies as well as serving on healthcare technology boards—this book is both a blueprint for transformation and a rallying cry for consumers of health and care, innovators, investors, policymakers, and health and care leaders alike.
Inside you’ll discover:
- Three unprecedented forces converging to rewrite the future of health and care
- The reimagination of health and care through a unified, intelligent, consumer-owned platform
- The impact and identity reckoning on the ecosystem—from app developers and wearables to retail, regulators, payers, pharma, and hospitals
- How to mitigate critical challenges like trust, security, and environmental impacts that led to past failures
From consumers of health and care to industry leaders, Intelligent Health empowers you to convert data into powerful insights about the present and predictive intelligence for the future, putting you in charge of your health destiny. The movement starts now—because your health, your care, and our collective future can’t wait.
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: A Defining Moment 5
Part I: System Failure: Our Moment of Opportunity 13
Chapter 2: Follow the Money 17
Chapter 3: The Myth of the Empowered Patient 31
Chapter 4: Healthcare Has a Technology Problem 41
Part II: Reimagining Health and Care 49
Chapter 5: Intelligent Health 51
Chapter 6: Connecting Data 65
Chapter 7: Creating Intelligence with AI Technologies 75
Chapter 8: Owning Your Health 89
Part III: The Stakeholder Reckoning and Evolution 101
Chapter 9: The Core Healthcare Ecosystem: Care Teams, Healthcare Systems,
and Caregivers 103
Chapter 10: The Financiers: Payers and Employers 119
Chapter 11: Governance and Guardians: Policymakers, Public Health Leaders,
and Advocates 133
Chapter 12: Scientific and Clinical Innovators: Pharma and Biotech, Academic
and Research Institutions 149
Chapter 13: Technology Enablers: Health IT, Medical Devices, and Data
Analytics 167
Chapter 14: Consumer Health Ecosystem: Retail Pharmacy, Food, and Digital
Services 181
Part IV: Five Imperatives for Intelligent Health 195
Chapter 15: Trust by Design 197
Chapter 16: Health Data Security 211
Chapter 17: Designing Intelligent Health for Everyone 227
Chapter 18: The Burning Platform 241
Chapter 19: Global Interconnectedness 255
Epilogue: Reclaiming Health in the Age of Intelligence 267
Acknowledgments 273
About the Author 277
References 279
Index 301
Nasim Afsar, MD, MBA, is a global healthcare executive with nearly two decades of leadership experience transforming health and care. She has served as Chief Health Officer at Oracle, led billion-dollar health systems as Chief Operating Officer at UCI Health, and advanced population health management and value-based care as an Associate Chief Medical Officer at UCLA Health. Dr. Afsar has worked with healthcare delivery systems, payers, pharmaceutical and medical device companies, and technology firms. She has partnered with the White House and global health agencies and serves on multiple boards. She brings a powerful combination of clinical expertise, operational leadership, and technological insightrare experience that grounds her commitment to reimagining the future of health and care.
