• At 26, Kevin Choi lost half his vision to glaucoma — a progressive eye disease.
• The diagnosis sparked the start of his healthtech startup, which uses AI to detect critical diseases.
• Choi said AI can speed up and simplify screening, but it's no substitute for a doctor.

At 26, Kevin Choi got a diagnosis that changed his life: glaucoma.

It's a progressive eye disease that damages the optic nerve, often without symptoms until it's too late. By the time doctors caught it, Choi had lost half his vision.

An engineer by training — and a former rifleman in South Korea's Marine Corps — Choi thought he had a solid handle on his health.

"I was really frustrated I didn't notice that," he said.

The 2016 diagnosis still gives him "panic." But it also sparked something big.

That year, Choi teamed up with his doctor, a vitreoretinal surgeon, to cofound Mediwhale, a South Korea-based healthtech startup.

Their mission is to use AI to catch diseases before symptoms show up and cause irreversible harm.

"I'm the person who feels the value of that the most," Choi said.

The tech can screen for cardiovascular, kidney, and eye diseases through non-invasive retinal scans.

Mediwhale's technology is primarily used in South Korea, and hospitals in Dubai, Italy, and Malaysia have also adopted it.

Mediwhale said in September that it had raised $12 million in its Series A2 funding round, led by Korea Development Bank.

AI can help with fast, early screening

Choi believes AI is most powerful in the earliest stage of care: screening.

AI, he said, can help healthcare providers make faster, smarter decisions — the kind that can mean the difference between early intervention and irreversible harm.

In some conditions, "speed is the most important," Choi said. That's true for "silent killers" like heart and kidney disease, and progressive conditions like glaucoma — all of which often show no early symptoms but, unchecked, can lead to permanent damage.

For patients with chronic conditions like diabetes or obesity, the stakes are even higher. Early complications can lead to dementia, liver disease, heart problems, or kidney failure.

The earlier these risks are spotted, the more options doctors — and patients — have.

Choi said Mediwhale's AI makes it easier to triage by flagging who's low-risk, who needs monitoring, and who should see a doctor immediately.

Screening patients at the first point of contact doesn't require "very deep knowledge," Choi said. That kind of quick, low-friction risk assessment is where AI shines.

Mediwhale's tool lets patients bypass traditional procedures — including blood tests, CT scans, and ultrasounds — when screening for cardiovascular and kidney risks.

Choi also said that when patients see their risks visualized through retinal scans, they tend to take it more seriously.

AI won't replace doctors

Despite his belief in AI's power, Choi is clear: It's not a replacement for doctors.

Patients want to hear a human doctor's opinion and reassurance.

Choi also said that medicine is often messier than a clean dataset. While AI is "brilliant at solving defined problems," it lacks the ability to navigate nuance.

"Medicine often requires a different dimension of decision-making," he said.

For example: How will a specific treatment affect someone's life? Will they follow through? How is their emotional state affecting their condition? These are all variables that algorithms still struggle to read, but doctors can pick up. These insights "go beyond simple data points," Choi said.

And when patients push back — say, hesitating to start a new medication — doctors are trained to both understand why and guide them.

They are able to "navigate patients' irrational behaviours while still grounding decisions in quantitative data," he said.

"These are complex decision-making processes that extend far beyond simply processing information."

• Quick-service and fast-food restaurants typically collect data on customers' purchasing behaviors.
• With the help of AI, they can now leverage their data to better manage inventory and operations.
• This article is part of "How AI Is Changing Everything: Supply Chain," a series on innovations in logistics.

Fast-food chain Juici Patties, which operates more than 70 locations in Florida, New York, and Jamaica, started on the island nation as a family kitchen in 1978. When the chain expanded into the US last year, it experienced stockouts.

Executives knew they needed a different strategy — one with advanced technology to scale their business, manage franchises, and sell thousands of patties each day, Stuart Levy, the company's chief technology officer, told Business Insider.

Today, Juici Patties uses AI's predictive and proactive features to prevent disruptions before they occur.

"AI is helping to keep our distribution centers stocked with enough of our branded packaging to meet demand," Levy said.

Indeed, AI technology is making its way into quick-service and fast-casual restaurant operations. AI can use data to form predictions about customer orders, then generate insights for leaders on how to manage inventory and operations.

Domino's Pizza and Microsoft teamed up to create a generative-AI assistant that saves managers time on inventory management and ingredient ordering. Starbucks also inked a deal with Microsoft to use genAI in its product development. And Yum Brands, the parent company of KFC, Taco Bell, and others, partnered with Nvidia on AI for internal tasks such as labor management and analytics processing.

For many quick-service restaurants, "their entire brand is built on speed and efficiency," said Spencer Michiel, the restaurant technology advisor at Back of House, a resource for restaurant tech solutions. "If there's anything that can help them with speed, efficiency, and lower cost, they're going to jump all over it."

Data-rich restaurants layer on AI

Restaurants are "extremely data-rich," Michiel said, which makes them well-suited to adopt AI. Major fast-food chains already have standard operating procedures to purchase based on demand, but AI takes that to the next level with forecasting abilities that more accurately predict demand and inform supply.

With AI's forecasting capabilities, restaurants can predict what customers might order and use this data to buy ingredients, a notoriously tricky part of restaurant supply chain management.

"The biggest thing that restaurants do badly is purchase," said Stephen Zagor, a consultant focused on restaurants and food businesses and an adjunct assistant professor of business at Columbia Business School.

AI draws from quick-service restaurants' internal point-of-sale data, such as sales trends and which products customers tend to buy at the same time. Then, an AI algorithm combines this data with external factors like the weather or local events.

"The beauty of AI is it's taking forecasted demand and turning that into a reaction all the way through the supply chain," Zagor said.

For example, AI can deliver granular data by location. For a restaurant right off an interstate, AI could predict that travel will slow down on certain days. Seeing that prediction, restaurant managers could decide to drop their inventory levels and purchase fewer items, Zagor said.

He named McDonald's as one quick-service restaurant that uses AI to maximize everything from its point-of-sale to its supply chain. The fast-food giant has partnered with Google Cloud and IBM on various AI solutions.

When it comes to data and AI, the level of standardization across major chains puts them at an advantage over smaller franchises and independent restaurants.

A mom-and-pop restaurant may not have "the time, the bandwidth, the skills, the knowledge" to gather data and create an action plan, Michiel said. Subscribing to software can cost hundreds of dollars each month, presenting financial barriers to small businesses. Any new back-of-house or supply chain software would need to integrate with existing point-of-sale systems. If done incorrectly, the result could be data loss or lag, "and it's going to be frustrating," Michiel said.

Serving up efficiency and financial gains

AI's predictive power can also help minimize waste in restaurant supply chains. If a restaurant orders too much, it could have to discard unused or expired food. This could require the business to increase meal costs to compensate for the loss, according to Michiel.

"Food waste is just a killer," Michiel said. "Over-ordering is straight loss. There's no way you're going to recover that cost."

Controlling costs is especially critical for fast-food chains, which order at scale and sell low-priced products. Making just 5 cents more on an item, or making 5 cents fewer, "is a big deal," Zagor said.

AI can also promote cost savings by flagging if a particular ingredient swap could result in higher profits without sacrificing taste or quality. The technology "smooths out" a restaurant's ability to purchase inventory while still keeping customer satisfaction top of mind, Zagor said.

"You can get good profit, and the customer is going to be happy," Zagor said. "It's win-win."

Levy said Juici Patties' AI implementation into its point-of-sale system and supply chain was time-consuming, involved some growing pains, and sparked fears about replacing the workforce with AI. He acknowledged that "AI isn't flawless."

Now that the technology is in place, though, Juici Patties has seen a boost in operational efficiency, Levy said. In one instance, the AI revealed that customers wanted to purchase food earlier in the day, before Juici Patties locations were open.

"We were missing potential sales during earlier hours of the day," Levy said. The restaurant chain acted upon that information and adjusted its opening times. The result: "a consistent increase in daily sales," Levy said.

• The Sean "Diddy" Combs trial began this week and featured testimony from Cassie Ventura.
• She testified about the graphic moments in her 11-year relationship with Combs.
• In the courthouse, the atmosphere was grim as Ventura shared shocking details.

From the start of Sean "Diddy" Combs' sex-trafficking trial, everyone was waiting for Cassie Ventura to appear. She was the star witness.

I expected Ventura's testimony to be explosive. But it turned out to be more graphic than I ever imagined.

In the courtroom, I noticed the distress on the face of Ventura's husband. His wife, who is eight months pregnant, was telling her alleged abuser and a room full of strangers about some of the worst moments in her life.

In September, federal prosecutors in Manhattan accused Combs of racketeering and sex trafficking. They say he used the vast power and resources of his record label and other businesses to arrange drug-fueled and baby oil-lubricated sexual encounters called "freak offs" with Ventura, other victims, and male escorts.

Combs pleaded not guilty and denies the sex-trafficking allegations, but he hasn't quite denied all wrongdoing. His legal team said he participated in "mutual abuse" with Ventura, and that the two frequently fought physically. This was a domestic violence case, they argued — ugly, but not criminal sex trafficking.

In her testimony, Ventura talked about a messy, 11-year relationship during which she fought for scraps of Combs' attention. He was often busy with other women and his various businesses, she said. Ventura participated in the freak offs out of love for Combs, she said, but they were never something she wanted.

The hip-hop mogul introduced her to the idea of freak offs about six months into their relationship, when she was 22 and owed him another nine albums as part of a record label deal, Ventura said. Combs would watch as Ventura would have sex with other men, who were paid thousands of dollars in cash, according to court testimony.

In text messages and emails shown as trial evidence, Ventura talked about arranging the freak offs, which required dropping by a Duane Reade to pick up baby oil, lubricant, candles, and condoms.

The freak offs could last up to four days, requiring drugs to maintain stamina, she said. They typically required up to 10 large bottles of baby oil, she testified. Everyone "had to be glistening," as she described it. At one point, the judge stepped in to ask prosecutors to pull back from the deluge of baby oil questions.

The disturbing nature of the testimony was only heightened by Ventura's appearance. She is due to have a baby in June and was visibly pregnant. One courtroom marshal said he was prepared to deliver her baby if the stress of testifying induced labor. I wasn't sure if he was joking. One of the prosecutors urged the judge to require Combs' lawyers to wrap up cross-examination. "We are afraid she could have the baby over the weekend," she said.

Cassie Ventura's testimony transfixed the courtroom

Over the years, I've reported on about a dozen trials and countless more court hearings. There were the uncomfortable benches of Donald Trump's criminal trial. The rowdy fans at the R. Kelly Trial. The cold December mornings when I lined up for the Ghislaine Maxwell trial. The ultracompetitive Sam Bankman-Fried trial, where getting in line at 4 a.m. still wasn't early enough to get inside the courtroom.

But nothing in my experience has compared to the Combs trial, which began Monday morning after a week of jury selection and is supposed to last two months.

Ever since Ventura accused Combs of sexual abuse in November 2023, Combs' legal quagmire has been one of the biggest stories in the country. Combs paid Ventura $20 million to settle her case, but a flood of other accusers filed additional civil lawsuits against him. When prosecutors brought the criminal case against Combs, it was put on the fast track.

No longer the image of a pop star, Combs dresses for court like an office drone, wearing thin crewneck sweaters over white button-down shirts. He rarely betrays any emotion, occasionally nodding during his lawyers' arguments or huddling with the attorneys beside him.

His large family, including his mother and seven children, has been in the courtroom to show their support. Every day, Combs flashes them heart symbols with his hands. Their expressions, during trial proceedings, have remained neutral. The gravity of the situation — Combs could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted of all charges — is obvious.

On the other side of the courtroom aisle are Ventura's support group, which includes her husband, Alex Fine, and several relatives. At some of the more raw moments of Ventura's testimony, Fine's face looked visibly pained. When her texts with Combs about the freak offs were shown to the jury, he broke his gaze and looked at his lap.

As Ventura testified in graphic detail, the courtroom was rapt. She spoke in a faint, dispassionate voice.

The grim atmosphere made the otherwise unbelievable details of the trial feel upsetting rather than dramatic. On social media, these details fly by as jokes. For Ventura, they left scars. In February of 2023, years after she left Combs, Ventura couldn't sleep, she testified.

"I couldn't take the pain that I was in anymore, and so I just tried to walk out the front door into traffic," she told the jury. "And my husband would not let me."

'I've been to a Diddy party'

On Monday, for opening statements, the line outside the lower Manhattan courthouse began the previous afternoon. Same Old Line Dudes, the standard-bearer line-sitting company for New York trials, declined to disclose the precise time their clients booked because "it's very competitive," a receptionist told me.

During lunch breaks, live-streamers went outside and updated their followers on what unfolded indoors. Christine Cornell, a courtroom sketch artist, took photos of her illustrations in natural sunlight to share them with the media. Vicky Perez, who had come to New York City from Connecticut to watch the trial's opening day, said she's a fan of Ventura, having purchased her first album when she was in the fifth grade. Perez wanted her to "get justice," she said.

"I want to see his downfall," she said of Combs.

The scene overwhelmed even Dennis Byron, the editor in chief of the Hip-Hop Enquirer, who said he's reported on the hip-hop scene for 35 years. He covered Comb's career since he was an up-and-coming artist.

"I've been to a Diddy party," he said.

"Not one of those parties," he quickly clarified.

Byron — who wore a tweed vest and trousers in the May afternoon heat — said he's attended and photographed Combs' extravagant "White Parties," where he took photos of the likes of Combs, Ventura, Kim Porter, and Jay-Z.

These parties took on a new meaning following the indictment against Combs, where they've been widely re-interpreted as sex parties (virtually every single celebrity who has been asked about this denies they were sex parties). But celebrities have been having orgies forever, Byron said. He remembers hearing about them in the 1980s. Flying in escorts — as prosecutors said Combs did for freak offs — wasn't anything new either, Byron said.

"Well, I never stayed for those," Byron said. "I never stayed for those orgies. But I'm sure they happen. But I never seen them."

Combs' White Parties were meant to show off his power as "a tastemaker," Byron said. Combs accrued cultural capital — something prosecutors later said he used to coerce his victims.

"Remember, that party was a regular party," he said as I wrapped up our conversation. "Ain't no party like a regular Diddy party."

Combs' lawyers acknowledge his flaws — but say he's not a sex trafficker

Combs' trial was taking place in the same 26th-floor courtroom that saw the trials of Sam Bankman-Fried and two of E. Jean Carroll's lawsuits against Trump. (Bankman-Fried and Combs share a jail unit together; Trump is in the White House.) As with all federal court cases, there's no broadcast or livestream.

Karen Agnifilo-Friedman, Luigi Mangione's lead defense lawyer and the husband of Combs' lead lawyer Mark Agnifilo, often showed up to watch. The court staff had also set up three overflow rooms for journalists and members of the public to watch the trial on a closed-circuit camera feed, plus two rooms for members of the in-house press like me.

Several people I spoke to said they were willing to keep an open mind, but believed it would be hard to shake the memory of watching the video of Combs beating Ventura and dragging her through a hotel hallway.

"I'm going to try to give him a fair shake, said Oota Ongo, a YouTuber who livestreamed himself walking around the courthouse after watching opening statements. "We all saw the Cassie tape. That Cassie tape is just something that I can't get out of my head."

Depending on the day, I alternated between the courtroom itself and a press room. When I checked out an overflow room one day, I spotted a prominent federal prosecutor who had put Bankman-Fried behind bars. He was paying close attention to Combs' lawyer, Teny Gregagaros, giving Combs' side of the story in an opening statement.

While Combs may have been an unpleasant, angry, jealous, and violent man — especially when drunk or high — he was not guilty of sex trafficking, Gregagos insisted. At most, he was responsible for domestic violence, she conceded.

"He is not charged with being mean," Gregaros told the jurors. "He is not charged with being a jerk."

The first witness was a security guard at the Intercontinental Hotel, who testified about the infamous video where Combs assaulted Ventura (Combs just wanted to get his phone back from her, his defense lawyers said).

Next, before Ventura, was a male dancer who said he acted as an escort. He testified about being asked to carefully urinate during sex.

"Apparently, I was doing it wrong because they both stopped me and told me that I was supposed to let a little out at a time and not go full, like, take a leak on her," he said, in a quote that perhaps best encapsulated both the graphic nature of the trial testimony and how prosecutors say Combs intimately choreographed people around him to satisfy his own desires.

During Ventura's cross-examination, Combs' lawyers pulled up texts in which Ventura indicated she enjoyed the freak offs.

But Ventura, in her testimony earlier, said she just wanted to make Combs happy. She loved him. But she never wanted the freak offs, she said.

"It made me feel worthless," Ventura testified. "Like I didn't have anything else to offer him."