Medika Life

A short LinkedIn video of Steve Jobs recently caught my attention because it speaks directly to one of the most important disciplines health-sector entrepreneurs must master. Jobs was not talking about hospitals, clinical workflow, artificial intelligence or digital health. He was talking about where innovation must begin, not with technology, but with customer experience. His point was simple and demanding. You cannot start with the technology and then figure out where to sell it.

Bill Curry, 65, raises cattle on the same land in rural Oklahoma once owned by his father and generations before him. Each quarter, for several years, he has made the 2½-hour drive to Oklahoma City for an epidural in his spine to treat his back pain. But this year, because of a new Medicare program, Curry has traveled a little more often. In February, during one trip, he was told unexpectedly that he needed preapproval for the procedure.

You’re at the dinner table, and someone starts chewing. Nothing loud, nothing unusual. But something inside you snaps. Your heart rate jumps. Your skin crawls. You feel a wave of rage so fast and so strong that you can’t explain it, even to yourself. You might get up and leave the room. You might want to scream. You’re not overreacting, and you’re not losing your mind. You may have misophonia, and science is finally catching up to what millions of people have been living with for years.

At every BIO International Convention, there are countries seeking investment, regions promoting research capabilities, and economic development organizations hoping to attract attention. Abu Dhabi’s presence at BIO2026 felt different. Its leaders were visible throughout the convention, participating in discussions on biopharma innovation, precision medicine, artificial intelligence, investment, genomics and policy. Partnership announcements emerged throughout the week.

Think about what happens to a person with Alzheimer’s disease. The tragedy isn’t the underlying pathology—that’s not what families grieve. What they mourn is the disappearance of the person they once knew. The individual who remembered and carried a lifetime of experience begins to fade away. The body remains, but the self doesn’t. We understand something in those moments that we rarely say plainly. And perhaps, it’s time we put this idea front and center.

Artificial intelligence was impossible to miss at HLTH Europe in Amsterdam. It appeared on the main stage, throughout the agenda, across the exhibition floor, and dominated conversations among providers, researchers, investors, entrepreneurs, and policymakers. Much of the public discussion around AI continues to focus on familiar names such as OpenAI, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity.

Conversations about women’s health are not new. Researchers, clinicians, patient advocates and policymakers have spent decades drawing attention to disparities in care, gaps in research and the unique challenges women face throughout their health journeys. However, many of those concerns remain remarkably familiar across health systems worldwide.

On March 25, 1911, flames tore through the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory on the eighth floor of Manhattan’s Asch Building. Inside were mostly young immigrant women, many still teenagers, trapped behind locked exit doors, a routine measure meant to prevent theft and unsanctioned breaks. In less than 20 minutes, 146 workers were dead. Some were burned alive. Others leaped nine stories to the pavement rather than face the fire. What followed feels painfully familiar.

You go to sleep one night feeling fine. When you wake up the next morning, something is wrong with one eye. The world looks blurry, darkened at the edges, or just gone from part of your view. There is no pain. No warning. And for thousands of people taking popular weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, this is exactly how it started.

The term “deep learning” is one layer of artificial intelligence. In fact, deep learning is a key subfield of AI and machine learning whose structure was directly inspired by the biological neural networks of the human brain. As mentioned, the foundation of AI technology comes from neuroscience—just as the original computers were modeled on human memory. But today’s advanced digital machines differ greatly from early simple computers.