The gastroenterology industry keeps talking about AI for endoscopies and polyp detection. Useful, yes. But it’s also like trying to bolt wheels onto a horse buggy. That’s what industries tried when Ford launched the car—optimize the buggy instead of building highways.
GI’s motor car has already arrived.
Today, startups peg the GI industry at $136 billion across the spectrum—IBD, IBS, obesity, liver disease, microbiome, motility, CRC, digital health. Digitization doesn’t grow industries by 10%. It grows them by 10x. That puts GI on the path to $1+ trillion.
Look at history:
- CDs worth $20B became streaming ecosystems worth more than $200B (Spotify).
- DVDs by mail turned into a $270B streaming giant (Netflix).
- Each leap came not from doing old things better, but from reimagining the industry entirely.
AI gives us the same opportunity in GI. Not just better scopes. Entirely new categories:
- Digital GI platforms delivering care virtually and asynchronously
- Predictive & preventive AI detecting disease years before the scope
- Microbiome intelligence shifting from treatment to transformation
- Robotics & automation reinventing procedures
- Patient-facing AI making gut health a continuous, consumer-driven journey
These aren’t hypotheticals.
Cologuard went from “few data available” in 2008 to 18M screenings by 2024. Exponential curves are already playing out in gastroenterology.
Yet most of the field is still debating incremental gains. While we focus on the endoscopy room, entrepreneurs, technologists, and investors outside GI are reinventing gut health. They’re not asking permission. They’re building the trillion-dollar GI industry of 2035 right now.
If gastroenterologists don’t lead, others will.
That’s why I created the Strategic AI Mastery Workshop. It’s designed for GI leaders who already see the motor car and are ready to drive it. Not another session on AI prompts or Python programming or AI based endoscopy, but something that’s of practical value almost immediately.
The only question is: will you still be holding the reins of a buggy—or steering the trillion-dollar industry that AI is creating?
>> Comment or reach out via private message for an invitation to the upcoming GI Mastermind – Strategic AI Mastery workshops.