Why Medical AI Needs a Referee | Protege's Engy Ziedan

Daisy Wolf and Eva Steinman are joined by Engy Ziedan, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Protege, to discuss why medical AI has a measurement problem, and why scoring well on a benchmark doesn't necessarily mean a model is ready for the hospital.

Engy explains why healthcare AI needs independent evaluations that go beyond static exams and measure how models actually perform in real-world clinical workflows. They explore the risks of subtle bias and misalignment, why the same model can rank differently depending on how it's prompted or tested, and what happens as AI becomes more personalized and changes faster than traditional healthcare quality systems can keep up.
The conversation also gets into Protege's role as an independent evaluator, how contaminated training data can undermine benchmarks, and why the future of medical AI may require continuous monitoring rather than occasional testing.

Resources:

Read our insights piece: https://www.a16z.news/p/the-oracle-problem-an-invisible-bottleneck

Follow Engy Ziedan on X: https://x.com/engyziedan

Follow Daisy Wolf on X: https://x.com/daisydwolf

Follow Eva Steinman on X: https://x.com/evajsteinman

Stay Updated:

Find a16z on YouTube: YouTube

Find a16z on X

Find a16z on LinkedIn

Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify

Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts

Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.