In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, I sit down with Lars Maaløe, Co-Founder and CTO of Corti.ai, to explore how AI is transforming healthcare. From explainability and compliance to building scalable AI infrastructure, Lars shares his journey from researching generative models to delivering life-changing technology for clinicians and patients worldwide.

We unpack the challenges of deploying AI in one of the most highly regulated industries, the importance of trust in AI-assisted decision-making, and why the future belongs to specialized models that combine accuracy, speed, and transparency.

Key Takeaways

• Explainability matters — why transparency in AI predictions is non-negotiable in healthcare.

• From research to reality — how generative AI evolved into mission-critical medical tools.

• Compliance as a competitive advantage — meeting and exceeding HIPAA, GDPR, and other regulatory standards.

• Scaling responsibly — designing APIs and infrastructure that empower startups and incumbents alike.

• Specialized vs. general models — why domain-specific AI will outperform general-purpose LLMs in clinical settings.

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What You’ll Learn

• The mindset shift needed to move AI pilots into full-scale production in healthcare.

• How uncertainty quantification can make AI safer and more reliable.

• Trends in healthtech startups, from ambient scribes to autonomous patient intake agents.

• The role of sovereign cloud deployments in protecting patient data.

• Why the next AI breakthroughs will come from self-supervised learning.

About Lars Maaløe

About Lars Maaløe

Lars Maaløe is a machine learning researcher turned healthtech entrepreneur, with a PhD in generative models long before they became mainstream. As CTO of Corti.ai, he leads the development of AI infrastructure that powers real-time decision support for healthcare providers globally — from ambient clinical documentation to patient triage and diagnostic assistance.

https://www.corti.ai

https://www.linkedin.com/in/larsmaaloe/

Episode Highlights

00:00 — Introduction & guest background

02:15 — The early days of generative AI research

06:05 — Why explainability is mission-critical in healthcare

09:50 — Accuracy, performance, and real-world deployment challenges

14:00 — Navigating healthcare regulations globally

18:20 — Startup trends in healthtech and AI

23:00 — Mindset shifts for rapid AI adoption in healthcare

26:10 — Readiness challenges beyond the tech stack

30:00 — Building AI agents for clinical use cases

32:00 — Sovereign cloud vs. public cloud in healthcare AI

34:00 — AI breakthroughs and the path to trustworthy reasoning

41:00 — Why specialized models outperform general-purpose AI in medicine

43:00 — Final thoughts & how to connect with Lars