S1, E33 - Ted Shortliffe, MD, PhD: 50 Years of Clinical AI

S1, E33 - Ted Shortliffe, MD, PhD: 50 Years of Clinical AI

From Practical AI in Healthcare by Steven Labkoff, MD and Leon Rozenblit, JD, PhD

April 19, 2026 · 48 min

About this episode

Ted Shortliffe discusses the evolution of clinical AI and its implications for decision support in healthcare.

Ted Shortliffe built MYCIN at Stanford in the 1970s, one of the first medical AI systems ever deployed in a clinical setting. Five decades later, he joins Steve and Leon to examine what has persisted in clinical decision support — above all, the demand for explainability — what has changed (computational power finally caught up to the ideas), and what the field may have lost along the way. The conversation includes a direct response to Bob Wachter's claim from S1E24 that AI in healthcare decision support was "too hard a problem to start with," and a case for why structured knowledge representation deserves a second look in the age of LLMs. For anyone tracing the arc of medical AI history, this episode is a rare primary source.

People in this episode

Hosts: Steven Labkoff, MD, Leon Rozenblit, JD, PhD

Guest: Ted Shortliffe, MD, PhD

Topics covered

  • clinical AI
  • medical decision support
  • explainability
  • computational power
  • knowledge representation
  • history of medical AI

Keywords

  • clinical AI
  • MYCIN
  • medical decision support
  • explainability
  • computational power
  • knowledge representation
  • healthcare AI

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Stanford

Books & works: MYCIN

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