The viral video of Will Smith eating spaghetti became a shorthand for how fast generative AI can improve. From awkward and unreliable to almost flawless in a year. At the @ICT&health World Conference in Maastricht, Daniel Kraft, MD used that moment to explain what we are now seeing in healthcare AI.
Early systems struggled with hallucinations and narrow use cases. Today, AI supports medical imaging, cardiology, diagnostics and clinical workflows, from second readers in radiology to AI scribes that reduce administrative burden and improve the patient conversation. According to Kraft, this is not linear progress but exponential change, invisible for years and suddenly impossible to ignore.
That shift echoes what Lucien Engelen described years ago as a Copernican moment in healthcare, moving from professional centred systems to patient centred care. AI accelerates that transition, enabling earlier detection, continuous monitoring and more personalised care, far beyond hospital walls.
Yet the article also makes a crucial point. Technology grows exponentially, people and systems do not. Adoption, trust, equity and human judgement remain decisive. AI should amplify intelligence, not replace it. The real risk is not that AI moves too fast, but that healthcare systems move too slowly to translate what is already possible into daily practice. Podcast hosts Lucien Engelen⁠ and Jessica Workum.