From Harvard Labs to AI Doctor: How Sina Hartung is Revolutionizing Healthcare with Eureka Health
When a close friend's life was saved by AI diagnosis, Harvard biomedical researcher Sina Hartung realized the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in healthcare. Now, as co-founder of Eureka Health, she's building an AI doctor platform that goes far beyond traditional telemedicine—offering personalized medical advice, prescription management, and lab orders through physician-reviewed AI recommendations.
Eureka Health positions itself as an "AI doctor that lets patients become their own doctor," providing instant medical advice through intelligent follow-up questions and connecting users to real-world care including prescriptions and lab orders. Hartung brings a unique perspective to healthcare AI, combining her Harvard biomedical informatics background with expertise in proteomics, machine learning, and deep learning applications for medical workflows.
In this conversation, Hartung discusses her transition from academic research to healthcare entrepreneurship, the life-saving potential of AI diagnostics, and how Eureka Health is addressing the gaps left by both traditional healthcare and existing telemedicine platforms. She shares insights on building trust between doctors and AI, the platform's approach to personalized medicine, and her vision for making advanced healthcare accessible to everyone.
1. You moved from biomedical research at Harvard to building Eureka Health as an AI doctor platform. What convinced you that AI could fill gaps that traditional telemedicine wasn't addressing?
AI saved the life of a close friend of mine. He had some abdominal pain. His mom, a physician, advised him that it was most likely a pulled muscle. But when he typed his symptoms into an AI, it told him to go to the ER immediately. It turned out to be a life-threatening, nearly-burst appendix.
We see stories like this every day at our clinic. AI is more powerful than most people realize, vastly outperforming physicians already. A study from Microsoft compared expert physicians to AI for diagnosing complex cases – the AI was correct at 4x the rate of the expert physicians. That is marvelous.
Imagine if everyone had access to this kind of technology? We’d save a lot of lives.
2. Eureka targets people who already research their health online but want better guidance. How do you prevent users from either over-relying on AI or completely bypassing human medical oversight?
The status quo isn’t a perfect medical system; the status quo is Googling and praying your symptoms don’t get worse before your doctor’s appointment in 3 months. Meanwhile, clinicians are burning out because they’re given 15 minutes to see each patient before moving onto the next one.
AI is an obvious improvement to all this. We’re not replacing your doctor’s visit in 3 months, we’re replacing the anxiety, stress, and tension before that. We’re also there after the visit to help you understand and implement what your doctor said. My friend above had AI tell him to go to the ER to get treatment. That saved his life.
Remember: we have a staff of doctors working for Eureka. It’s not about replacing doctors, it’s about letting doctors do what they do best.
3. Your platform can actually send prescriptions and lab orders after physician review. What's been the hardest part about getting doctors to trust AI-generated recommendations?
You'd think that doctors are against AI, but I'm seeing the opposite. The doctors we hire use AI in their own medical practice. For example, one of our doctors is the ex-chief of endocrinology at Cleveland Clinic. He regularly uses AI to check his own thinking, rephrase complex medical jargon into easy-to-digest patient messages, and brainstorm treatment approaches. He has 20+ years of experience, and he uses AI to help him stay up to date and give him directions to explore.
We don’t view it as a competition between AI and doctor, it’s a collaboration. We collect patients’ medical records and our AI ingests all of it. It highlights relevant patterns and insights from the medical history, helping physicians make faster, more informed decisions.
AI is already positively transforming healthcare and it will only get better from here. We're hoping to make Eureka accessible to everyone and help millions live healthier lives.
Sina’s Twitter: https://x.com/SinaHartung
Eureka’s website: https://www.eurekahealth.com/
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