Tech visionary, business leader and proud Longhorn Michael Dell delivered the keynote address at Thursday’s convocation for Dell Medical School’s Class of 2024, challenging the graduates to lead health care into a new age.
“From breakthrough treatments to diagnosis to preventive and predictive care, the connection between medicine, health care and technology is growing stronger and deeper by the day,” said Dell, founder, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies. He is co-founder with his wife, Susan, of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, which in 2013 invested $50 million in The University of Texas at Austin’s plan to build what would become Dell Med. Their goal was to create a place where physicians look beyond the silos of medicine to focus on the whole system, collaborate to improve patient care at scale, and advance their skills through data, technology and innovation. “It will be up to each of you to maximize the opportunity,” he added.
The graduates, Dell Med’s fifth cohort to complete its M.D. program since the school’s founding in 2014, entered medical school at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and leave as generative artificial intelligence is rocking industries from entertainment to finance. Dell encouraged the newest class of doctors to play an active role in developing AI tools, noting the important questions physicians must answer in the coming years.
“How do we use [AI] responsibly — make sure our models are trained to understand our ethics, our laws, morals, humanity?” he asked. “How do we democratize this power and use it to democratize health care — make it more equitable and available to the under-resourced and underserved?
“How do we hold ourselves accountable at the bedside, amplified by technology in the clinic and the lab? And always be mindful of the person, the patient and the community?”
Claudia Lucchinetti, M.D., dean of Dell Med and UT’s senior vice president for medical affairs, echoed Dell’s assessment that the Class of 2024 will practice in “an age of miracles.”
“The wonders you will witness — and the wonders you will work — are things we can now only imagine,” she said.
Daniel Bamrick-Fernandez, who will continue his medical education as a dermatology resident at the University of Illinois Chicago this summer, delivered the student keynote address. The week of celebration culminates on Saturday, when retired Maj. Gen. Jeannie M. Leavitt, the first woman fighter pilot for the U.S. Air Force, will deliver the keynote for the University’s 141st commencement.
You have more power to effect more change than any generation in history.
Michael Dell, Chairman & CEO, Dell Technologies; Co-Founder, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation