AI and the health gatekeeper: the 53rd Harvard alumni breakfast
Can AI move health systems from treatment toward prevention? The 53rd Harvard alumni breakfast in Beijing put that question to public health and industry.
The 53rd Harvard alumni breakfast, held in Beijing on 7 December 2025, examined how artificial intelligence is reshaping public health control and health management — and what it would take for prevention, rather than treatment, to become the centre of the system.
The session was hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School China alumni association and the Harvard Club of Beijing, and convened by Dr Liu Qian, president of the HKS China alumni association, together with IRI CEO Greg Li, an alumnus of Harvard Medical School.
Professor Di Qian of Tsinghua University’s Vanke School of Public Health spoke on AI in public health. His research has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine; it contributed to the evidence base for the World Health Organization’s revised air quality guidelines in 2021, and he has been listed among the world’s top 2% of scientists by Elsevier for four consecutive years. His team leads Tsinghua’s public health domain-specific large model work.
IRI Chairman Bill Lang also spoke. Chairman of Small Business Australia and co-founder of IRI, he began his career as a data scientist at McKinsey & Company and works with Dr Greg Li on applying AI to neuromusculoskeletal health assessment.