Prioritizing Emotions When Designing the Healthcare Experience

David researches innovation, tools, and best practices at the intersection of technology and design, with a focus on conversational AI (voice and text virtual assistants or chatbots), the metaverse, extended reality (augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality), and other emerging technologies.

Prior to joining Forrester, David worked in the software industry for eight years after discovering his passion for technology and design while developing motion graphics and games in Z-80 machine code as a high school student for fun and then researching neural networks as an undergraduate studying cognitive science, AI, philosophy of mind, and linguistics. He began his career as a software engineer coding in NeXT Objective-C and designing UIs in NeXT Interface Builder, then immersed himself in various emerging technologies applied to the web, including public key cryptography and VRML 3D interactive graphics. He also founded a web video production and motion graphics company two years before YouTube existed, directing and producing 340 videos for clients throughout the US and Europe as well as a series of 20 documentary shorts about topics in science, technology, and design.

David holds a BA in cognitive science from Amherst College where, in his senior honors thesis, he predicted the ascent of neural networks two decades before they displaced traditional rules-based approaches to AI. He also holds an MA in the history of ideas from St. John’s Graduate Institute, Santa Fe. Prior to college, David grew up in France, where he earned a baccalauréat from Lycée les Eaux Claires.

Erica Lloyd is Senior Direction and GM Healthcare and Education at Soul Machines, an AGI research organization that has created an astonishing, autonomously animated Digital Workforce. Erica works to add empathy with humanized AI into patient and healthcare workforce digital experiences at scale. Her goal is to deploy Digital People for the benefit of healthcare people, patients and enterprises globally. Erica has a background in technology, innovation ecosystem and research in the private and public sector.