With the growth of AI comes concerns about fairness and bias in the development, training, and deployment of agentic AI systems in health care and pharma. This episode features an interview with an expert on algorithmic fairness and bias who conducts research on responsible AI – Dr. Kalinda Ukanwa, Assistant Professor of Marketing at University of California, Irvine. Dr. Ukanwa explains how bias can arise in AI tools and systems for health care, the conditions under which biases could be exacerbated in the use of these tools, and strategies for identifying and overcoming bias in agentic AI systems for health care and pharma.

In the second installment of this two-part series, Tableau’s Nate Nichols explores how agentic AI can enhance—not replace—clinicians by providing vital services for care teams, such as real-time transcription, EHR-integrated summaries, and smarter triage, that can free clinicians to focus on patients. The conversation covers patient-side benefits, barriers to adoption, practical first steps for pharma and health systems, and marketing in an agent-first world.

In the first segment of this two-part series, Nate Nichols, Head of Generative AI at Tableau, speaks about the rise of agentic AI—systems that can reason, plan, and take action using digital tools. Nichols explains how agentic AI differs from traditional chatbots, shares real-world examples, and explores how these capabilities could transform healthcare by enabling proactive, concierge-like support for patients. The discussion also touches on opportunities in pharma, from regulatory compliance to accelerating clinical trials and drug discovery.