Episode summary
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Live From NYSE with LifeMD (Part Two) | Bloomberg Businessweek
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily
· · 34 min · Hosts: Carol Massar, Tim Stenovec · Guests: Joan LaRovere, Stephanie Faubion, Karen Koffler
Summary
The episode centers on how AI, data gaps, and new care models could change healthcare, especially for women. The host and guests argue that AI already has real promise in diagnosis, workflow automation, and drug development, but only if the underlying data are accurate, diverse, and built for specific use cases rather than broad, unreliable outputs. Dr. Joan LaRovere says the moment feels like an industrial revolution, while also warning that healthcare needs better data for women and underserved populations.
The conversation then shifts to menopause and women’s health research, where Dr. Stephanie Faubion says the field still relies too heavily on the 2002 Women’s Health Initiative results and lacks modern funding for new trials. She argues that women and many clinicians were never properly educated about menopause, so care often starts too late. She says the fix has to be multimodal: better research, better clinician education, and more proactive support through primary care and telehealth.
Dr. Karen Koffler broadens the discussion to functional medicine, saying the goal is to find the root causes of symptoms by looking at lifestyle, environment, and genetics. She says patients should ask why symptoms are happening, not just how to suppress them, and argues that sleep, movement, nutrition, and purpose remain the core of better aging, especially for women navigating hormonal change.
Key takeaways
- Dr. Joan LaRovere says AI could speed diagnosis, support clinicians, and improve automation, but only if the models are trained on high-quality data that includes all populations.
- Dr. Stephanie Faubion says women’s health research is still leaning on 2002 data from the Women’s Health Initiative and needs new, decentralized funding to update it.
- Faubion says menopause is not a disease but a universal life event, and many women and clinicians still lack the education to manage it well.
- Dr. Karen Koffler says functional medicine focuses on root causes, not just symptoms, by examining lifestyle, environment, and genetics.
- Koffler says the biggest health levers remain sleep, movement, diet, and purpose, even as new drugs and technologies gain attention.
Notable quotes
“AI has the power to be transformative in our world. Um, I don't think that's a hard thing to understand or see, but we have to be cautious as we use it”
“we haven't historically done a great job of including women in clinical trials, collecting data on women, understanding, but to your point around technology with real time data”
“No one gets the talk when you're about to stop your periods. So women are unprepared”
“in functional medicine we go beyond what we've t been taught in conventional medicine to really look for the root causes of why someone has been diagnosed with a particular condition”
How the episode opens
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. — This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenc on Bloomberg Radio.
You know, we came across some research. Um, it talked about the explosive growth of AI chat bots and how it's made it a very popular tool for people looking for guidance on their ailments and OpenAI has said that more than 200 million people ask Chat GPT health and wellness questions every week. And yet, there's also been a study out in the medical journal BMJ Open.
This was published last month. They found Tim that AIdriven chat bots are giving users problematic medical advice about half the time. So highlighting the health risks of the technology.
Yeah, you just have to push back ever so slightly and then it says actually you're right about that. — I think you make a really good point. I will say I some one of my friends who's a doctor did show me this um chatbot that doctors are allowed that doctors have access to. they have to use a certain
Uh license number that they have and it only uses it's only trained on journals and it's pretty cool. — So it's only as good as the data that goes in which is what we want to get into. Um great to have back with us someone who understands AI technology and medical care. Dr. uh Joan Lo River, she is senior vice president, interim chief medical officer in Boston Children's Hospital. She's also on the board of life MD.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- healthcare industry
- menopause
- womens health
- integrative medicine
- nyse healthcare coverage
Companies and tickers mentioned
- LifeMD
Watch the episode
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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