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The health care sector is a notorious laggard when it comes to technology. It was slow to use computers, digitize patient data, and share information electronically. While most of the world instantly interacts via Zoom and Slack, hospitals — even today — are still sending faxes.

But something different is happening with generative AI.

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Health systems, drugmakers, and insurers are racing to build the technology into their operations, aligning themselves with corporate giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia, whose executives speak about each incremental advancement of AI as an earth-shattering event. “The generative AI revolution is here,” Jensen Huang, 61, Nvidia’s leather-jacket-clad CEO, declared during the company’s GTC conference in San Jose, Calif., last week.

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