In many areas of medical diagnoses, robotics and artificial intelligence will be the future. But while machine learning and algorithms can improve medicine, healthcare requires something else to be sustainable: compassion. In this keynote address, covering evolutionary biology, genetics and healthcare stories, Dr Sharad P Paul MD focuses on the greatest defence doctors can develop against their own unemployment: empathy.

Dr Sharad P Paul MD is a skin cancer surgeon, family physician, academic, skincare expert, evolutionary biologist, storyteller, and social entrepreneur, as well as an adjunct professor at Auckland University of Technology. Born in England, he grew up in India and considers himself a global citizen who lives Down Under.

In 2003, he received a Health Innovation award, and in 2008, he was featured in international editions of Time. He has been called a Renaissance Man by New Zealand Herald’s Canvas magazine and a polymath by Good magazine.

In 2012, he was awarded the New Zealand Medical Association’s highest honour, the Chair’s Award. More recently, he won the acclaimed Ko Awatea Excellence in Health Improvement Award for ‘Leading Health Improvement on a Global Scale’ and for his work in patient-centred medicine.