EP 17 Drs. Zaid Altawil MD & Nicholas Stark MD MBA

Building the Future of Emergency Medicine: Inside the EM Innovation Collaborative

Guest and Release Date

Guests: Zaid Altawil, MD, Co-Director of the Emergency Medicine Innovation Collaborative
Nicholas Stark, MD, Co-Director of the Emergency Medicine Innovation Collaborative
Release Date: 11/05/25

Episode Summary

What happens when two emergency physicians decide the old way of innovating in medicine no longer works? In this episode, DJ and Ethan sit down with Dr. Zaid Altawil and Dr. Nicholas Stark to explore how the Emergency Medicine Innovation Collaborative was built to democratize innovation for frontline clinicians. This conversation comes at a pivotal moment as AI, documentation tools, and workflow redesign accelerate far faster than traditional systems can handle. Zaid and Nick explain why the current innovation ecosystem leaves most emergency physicians behind and how EMIC is creating a practical pathway from idea to implementation for clinicians everywhere.

The episode opens with a discussion of a JAMA Network Open study that cut ED discharge documentation time in half using a locally deployed large language model. This sets the stage for a broader question. How do we take promising technology and actually get it into the hands of physicians who need it? Zaid and Nick share the frustrations that pushed them to build EMIC including institutional red tape, lack of mentorship, and the slow return of bureaucracy after the COVID era loosened traditional barriers. They describe how clinicians across the country were solving the same problems in isolation and how a collaborative model could change everything.

They walk through the challenges early innovators face, the misconceptions about needing technical or business training, and the practical steps any resident or attending can take to start identifying solvable problems. The conversation highlights the emotional side of innovation including burnout, work life integration, and the loneliness many physician founders feel. It ends with a forward looking discussion of where AI is actually useful today, what separates pragmatic tools from hype, and how EMIC plans to launch a national innovation lab to help pilot and scale clinician led solutions. For anyone interested in building the future of emergency medicine, this episode is a roadmap.

In This Episode, We Cover

🚀 Why EMIC was created to remove red tape and connect innovators across institutions
🧩 How the pandemic revealed both creativity and structural barriers in emergency medicine
💡 Practical steps clinicians can take to identify real problems worth solving
🏥 What separates truly useful AI tools from products that chase hype
🤝 How collaboration, mentorship, and community prevent innovation burnout
📈 Why physician led companies often build better solutions for frontline care
🧭 The upcoming EMIC Innovation Lab and how it may reshape implementation pathways
⚖️ Equity concerns when only large academic centers have innovation infrastructure

Papers Discussed This Episode
Song JW, Park J, Kim JH, You SC. Large Language Model Assistant for Emergency Department Discharge Documentation. JAMA Netw Open. 2025 Oct 1;8(10):e2538427. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.38427. PMID: 41118162; PMCID: PMC12541540.

Connect with the Guest

Emergency Medicine Innovation Collaborative

LinkedIn: Zaid Altawil, MD & Nicholas Stark, MD

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