Mass General Brigham Researchers Make Their 2025 Scientific Predictions

"In 2025, I believe we will uncover the answers to remaining questions about nutrient metabolism and why a calorie is not a calorie, thereby improving our understanding of why some people gain weight."

Caroline Apovian, MD
Co-Director, Center for Weight Management and Wellness
Brigham and Women’s Hospital

"In the coming year, I see artificial intelligence (AI) being integrated more into health care as a supplement to physician knowledge and intuition. With the amount of biomedical data we are generating, I predict AI tools will improve our ability to interpret and apply the most salient information to individual patients, resulting in a personalized approach to patient care. I also predict that AI will continue to greatly reduce the administrative burden on providers and enable them to spend more time with their patients."

William Hwang, MD, PhD
Investigator, Center for Systems Biology, Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research, Department of Radiation Oncology
Massachusetts General Hospital

"I think in 2025 we will see the implementation of generative artificial intelligence (AI) language models (i.e., chatbots) for some aspects of routine clinical care, such as the preparation of patient communications, generation of preliminary diagnostic test reports, or summarization of patient medical records."

Shaan Khurshid, MD, MPH
Investigator, Telemachus and Irene Demoulas Family Foundation Center for Cardiac Arrhythmias
Massachusetts General Hospital

"In 2025, I think we will recognize the power of drones and begin to use them to transform the way we deliver health care by making the home the center of care. Drone-facilitated care will impact primary care, urgent and emergency care, and even enable public health leaps by bringing care directly to patients in ways we never thought possible (or maybe thought were possible only for the Jetsons)."

David Levine, MD, MPH, MA
Clinical Director of Research and Development
Mass General Brigham

"Increased access to emerging technologies and personalized data, combined with information specifically tailored for the individual, will drive self-care in health and wellness in more patients, initially in preventative medicine, in the next year. This phenomenon will begin to impact chronic disease management and progressively more complex conditions and will accelerate devolution of care and responsibility for many conditions to the patient - who is often best placed to understand their own health."

Calum A. MacRae, MD, PhD
Vice Chair for Scientific Innovation
Brigham and Women’s Hospital

"Treatments for rare genetic diseases are rapidly being translated to clinics. With close to 40 gene and cell therapies approved and hundreds expected to come down the pipeline, I believe in 2025 we will see many more patients benefiting from genetic therapies."

Susan A. Slaugenhaupt, PhD
Scientific Director,  Mass General Research Institute
Massachusetts General Hospital