“Today, generative AI is full of promise to unlock new cures and better care. Will it deliver — or just like Electronic Records and the Internet itself — be constrained by old practices? Rushing Headlong details how despite revolutionary advances, decades of policy, profit incentives, and fragmented systems have left patients, clinicians, industry, and researchers struggling to access and use the very data meant to transform care. Physician-entrepreneur Yin Ho documents personal and corporate lessons learned with a call to action — and an optimistic way ahead for the future. An important read for everyone in healthcare with the will to confront structural obstacles, rethink incentives, and harness technology with courage and intention in the interest of better patient care.”

Peter Frishauf
Founder, Medscape, Godfather, Osmosis.org

“Amid the noise of acceleration, Rushing Headlong reminds us that progress without purpose is peril. Its stories are urgent, universal, and deeply human—offering clarity for anyone determined not just to keep pace, but to shape the future with intention.”

Stephane Bancel
CEO Moderna

“Yin Ho brings thirty years of experience in healthcare IT and common sense to the conversation about the impact of AI on healthcare. While providing a realistic survey of the history of healthcare IT, AI, and its limitations, she offers a hopeful vision for the engagement of physicians and patients in determining the most impactful applications for AI in healthcare.”

Nancy J. Brown, MD
Dean, Yale School of Medicine

“A tour de force…a master class on how information technology, policy, and the best and worst of intentions can combine to undermine patients and the physicians who care for them. Rushing Headlong should be required reading for doctors, patients, and anyone who cares about the future of technology in healthcare.”

Pauline W. Chen, MD
Author of FINAL EXAM; À SURGEON’S REFLECTIONS ON MORTALITY

“Dr. S. Yin Ho’s Rushing Headlong presents a comprehensive 25-year history of healthcare information technology (HIT) in the United States, written from the unique perspective of someone who participated in many of its defining moments. The book traces the evolution from the early optimistic days of healthcare IT through today’s generative AI revolution, revealing how good intentions and market forces created a system that prioritizes billing and transactions over patient care and medical research. This book is a must read for practitioners, academics, researchers, and policy makers and will become a milestone in the field. Great and pioneering effort. Much needed.”

Ayman El-Mohandes, MBBCh, MD, MPH
Dean, CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy

“This book is essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of healthcare. It brilliantly traces the evolution of health IT over the past three decades and makes a compelling case for how generative AI can finally unlock the promise of data to improve care, accelerate research, and transform the system.”

Bunny Ellerin
CEO Digital Health New York

“Yin Ho doesn’t rush. She thinks hard, smart, and outside the proverbial box. Then she acts—boldly, creatively, intuitively, strategically. That’s why she arrives ahead of the curve, precisely positioned for disruptive success in the swiftly changing healthcare ecosystem. There is nothing artificial about her intelligence.”

Peter Pitts
President, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, Visiting Professor, University of Paris School of Medicine, Former Associate Commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration

“As a Chief Patient Officer for pharma and biotech, I have seen firsthand how the patient journey is hindered by a fragmented and broken U.S. healthcare system. The solution is more than innovation, it demands systemic change. Rushing Headlong shows why decades of fragmented health IT have hindered progress, yet also why responsible AI could offer us a rare chance to unite care and research. As someone who has dedicated a lifetime to patient advocacy, I find Dr. Ho’s work not only compelling, but essential reading for anyone touched by the health system– which is all of us.”

Jodie Gillon
CEO BioCT

“Despite decades of investment, healthcare IT remains frustratingly broken—patients can’t access their records, clinicians battle clunky systems, and promising innovations stall before making real impact. In Rushing Headlong, Dr. Ho delivers an unflinching examination of how economic incentives and regulatory capture created today’s fragmented system, while asking the critical question: ‘Can generative AI finally bridge these gaps so we can finally have more transparency in our own health?’”

Deborah Perry Piscione
Silicon Valley-based serial entrepreneur and co-author Employment is Dead: How Disruptive Technologies are Revolutionizing the Way We Work (Harvard Business Review) 

“Dr. Yin Ho has written the book our industry has been waiting for: an unflinching history of health IT and a clear-eyed roadmap for the future. Her insights on data curation, policy, and generative AI are not only timely, but essential for anyone who believes healthcare can, and must, work better for patients. Rushing Headlong is both a cautionary tale and a call to action. I am deeply grateful for Yin’s mentorship and proud to count her as a friend. This book will challenge and inspire leaders across healthcare and technology alike.”

Shashi Shankar
Co-Founder and CEO, Novellia Inc.

"Rushing Headlong: Health IT’s Legacy and the Road to Responsible AI is a review of the origins and evolution of health information technology in the U.S. From the earliest attempts to computerize manilla charts in doctor’s offices, to e-prescribing and the multiple failed attempts to achieve industry-wide data interoperability, Dr. Ho gives a personal front row seat as a Harvard/Yale trained ER doctor and health IT entrepreneur to the complexities of our fragmented healthcare system and the various attempts to streamline it with technology. About halfway through the book, you realize there are two distinct IT systems that do not play well together: one for care delivery and the other for clinical research. Dr. Ho reviews these two systems in depth and then delivers us to the present time where the promises of Generative AI are being tested and applied and leaves us with a glimmer of hope for the possibility of a whole new crop of health IT companies. This book is a must read for anyone starting a new health tech startup, incumbent players lobbying for payment reform or even the earliest graduating medical students who are getting ready to care for patients."

Missy Krasner
former Senior Advisor, to the inaugural Office of National Coordinator for Health IT, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, venture capitalist and executive at Amazon, Google and Box.

“Data and the lack of a research-oriented infrastructure remain the bottlenecks for healthcare innovation, and this book perfectly articulates why, while shedding new light to what’s possible. Healthcare data is primarily captured for billing, creating significant challenges when trying to make secondary use to accelerate data-driven clinical research and access to new treatments. A thought-provoking masterpiece that will inspire many and catalyze progress forward.”

Xinkun Nie, PhD
Founder and CEO, Lighten Inc.