Vitality AI, The Agentic Mindset, and Why I Joined Sema4.ai
In the autumn of 2023, after a decade of intense work in the tech industry, I made the deliberate decision to take a sabbatical. This wasn’t just a break from the relentless pace of the tech world; it was an opportunity to focus on personal growth, physical and mental well-being, and to nurture my passion for exploring new technology domains, particularly the cutting-edge advancements in AI. During this period of reflection and exploration, I embarked on a journey that would culminate in the creation of Vitality AI, a multi-agent Healthcare AI application that would ultimately lead me to join the team at Sema4.ai.
Genesis of Vitality AI: The Catalyst for an Agentic Mindset
Vitality AI wasn’t born out of curiosity — it was born out of necessity and frustration. Over the last decade, as I committed to transforming my lifestyle — embracing an active routine of running 20–25 miles per week, adopting a healthier diet, eliminating alcohol, and shedding over 40 pounds — I relied heavily on data as my motivator and accountability partner. Data has always been my compass, guiding me through each health decision and keeping me on track. Yet, as my health data grew more extensive — spanning 10 years of electronic medical records, fitness metrics, and more — I found it increasingly difficult to extract meaningful insights. Simple and complex questions about my health became frustratingly complex to answer.
This frustration came to a head one day during my sabbatical as I sat in Northwestern Hospital, waiting to see a renowned rheumatologist. After a four-month wait for this appointment, the experience was a stark reminder of the inefficiencies in our healthcare system. A bright resident spent over 90 minutes fumbling through various medical portals and dashboards, attempting to gather data spread across multiple systems. She was piecing together years of lab results, MRIs, X-rays, medication histories, and procedure records to answer the specialist’s queries. I couldn’t help but think: What a waste of her time, and mine. There had to be a better way to ask — and receive answers to — these critical health questions in natural language, without the cumbersome dance through unintuitive dashboards and traditional analytics tools.
Envisioning the Ideal Solution: A Virtual Room Full of Healthcare Specialists
It was in that moment, driven by the need for a seamless, intuitive interface to my own health data, that the seed for Vitality AI was planted. I envisioned a scenario where I could command a virtual room full of healthcare specialists — neurologists, rheumatologists, endocrinologists, geneticists, nurses, pharmacologists, lab technicians, fitness coaches, and more — each intimately familiar with every aspect of my health data relevant to their specialization. These experts would collaborate in real-time, just as they would in a multidisciplinary team meeting, to answer any complex health question I had with the precision and expertise of their real-world counterparts — all without the constraints of time, location, or availability. This visualization became a cornerstone of my thought process, shaping the development of Vitality AI.
To illustrate the kind of complex health scenarios that would benefit from such a coordinated, multidisciplinary approach, consider the following examples:
Health Query 1: “I’ve been experiencing chronic fatigue, intermittent joint pain, and occasional numbness in my hands and feet over the past year. Given my family history of autoimmune diseases and recent MRI and blood test results, could this be early signs of a neurological or autoimmune condition? What steps should I take to manage my symptoms and prevent progression?”
Specialists Needed: Neurologist, Rheumatologist, Endocrinologist, Geneticist, and Health Coach.
Health Query 2: “With my recent diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes, history of high blood pressure, and the fact that I’ve started experiencing memory lapses, how should I adjust my diet, exercise routine, and medication regimen to manage these conditions and reduce my risk of cognitive decline?”
Specialists Needed: Endocrinologist, Cardiologist, Neurologist, Dietitian, and Fitness Coach.
Health Query 3: “I’ve had several episodes of severe migraines over the past few months, coupled with fluctuating blood pressure and anxiety. Could these symptoms be related to hormonal imbalances, stress, or something more serious? How should I approach treatment to address all these factors?”
Specialists Needed: Neurologist, Cardiologist, Psychiatrist, Endocrinologist, and Psychologist.
In each of these scenarios, the integration of expertise from multiple specialists would be essential to provide a comprehensive answer. The complexity of the symptoms and potential underlying causes means that no single specialist could cover all aspects of the patient’s condition. This is exactly the type of deep, interdisciplinary insight that I wanted Vitality AI to deliver — insights that require a level of coordination and expertise that traditional tools simply cannot offer.
Frustration with Current Tools and Apps
As inspiring as this vision was, the reality I faced with current tools was starkly different. Instead of a seamlessly integrated system of experts, I found myself dealing with clunky, unintelligent interfaces that required numerous unnecessary clicks or forced me to hunt for the right graph or dashboard just to answer a simple question. Have you ever tried to get a straightforward answer from the Apple Health App, like “How many miles did I run last year, and how does that compare to the previous 5 years?” What should be an easy query quickly becomes a frustrating ordeal. My frustration with existing digital tools reached a tipping point as I started getting a taste of what was possible with ChatGPT. The efficiency, power, and ease of use I experienced with ChatGPT immediately exposed the shortcomings of most current applications.
This reminded me of another pivotal moment in tech history back in 2007 when I first got my hands on the original iPhone. Its intuitive design and user-friendly interface made everything that came before it feel instantly obsolete. Going back to my Motorola Razr flip phone while traveling internationally felt like a major step backward, highlighting just how transformative the iPhone was. Similarly, the experience of using ChatGPT highlighted the vast gap between what was possible and the frustrating limitations of existing tools. The difference was so profound that I was willing to invest the effort to bring those efficiencies into my most important apps. The very same desire for something so intuitive, only to have it taken away, drove me to invest time in transforming my most-used applications — first Evernote last year, and now my health data — replacing my Apple Health app, multiple MyChart applications, and other apps provided by health providers with something far more powerful and seamless.
Vitality AI: A Comprehensive Healthcare Solution
It became clear that a solution like Vitality AI wasn’t just desirable — it was essential. The existing tools couldn’t match the vision of a coordinated, expert-driven approach to health management. That’s when I knew I needed to build something fundamentally different.
With these thoughts in mind, I set out to build Vitality AI — not just another healthcare application, but a powerful, multi-agent system designed to provide comprehensive, precise, and actionable health insights. At the heart of this system is “Doctor Vitality,” a virtual leader of an 8-Agent Medical Team, each with distinct expertise. Together, these agents work collaboratively to analyze and interpret a decade’s worth of health data, ranging from the Apple Health App, MyChart, and full EMR extracts, including MRI and X-ray imaging from multiple healthcare providers, to various other FHIR-compliant systems. This multi-agent approach allows Vitality AI to offer a holistic view of your health, providing deep insights and tailored recommendations that traditional tools struggle to deliver.
Transition to the Agentic Mindset: A New Way of Thinking
Defining the Aha Moment
Working on Vitality AI, even before I joined Sema4.ai, I began to experience what I now call “Aha Moments” — instances where the power and potential of AI agents became unmistakably clear.
These moments were not just about seeing a solution; they were about understanding how AI could fundamentally change the way we approach complex problems. Whether it was witnessing advanced reasoning in action or observing seamless collaboration between multiple agents to solve a problem, these moments were revelations that reshaped my understanding of AI.
To bring this concept to life, let’s explore one of these Aha Moments through a relatable health query.
Demonstrating the Aha Moment with Vitality AI
Imagine you’re dealing with a common health concern:
“I recently started taking Ibuprofen for my headaches. Are there any potential interactions with this and my current medications I should be aware of?”
Now, here’s how Vitality AI responds.
This response from Vitality AI provides a detailed analysis, but the aha movement comes with the dynamic collaboration that occurred within the Vitality Medical Team to produce such a comprehensive response. Here is a copy of the multi-agent communication transcript from the Vitality Medical Team:
What you’ve just witnessed is a clear demonstration of AI’s capability to orchestrate complex, real-time collaboration between specialized agents. Doctor Vitality initiates the plan, but as the Pharmacist uncovers potential risks, the entire team kicks into high gear. Nurse Practitioner Nelly validates and expands the plan, the Lab Technician dives into detailed blood tests, and the Health Coach steps in with personalized dietary advice. Finally, the Clinical Data Analyst ties it all together, synthesizing a wealth of data into actionable insights.
This is more than just a response; it’s a powerful example of AI-driven collaboration in action. The collaboration is so seamless and dynamic that it’s easy to forget you’re interacting with AI at all. It’s in these moments, where the system adapts and evolves in real-time, that the true power of the Agentic Mindset becomes crystal clear.
Embracing the Agentic Mindset
The scenario you just witnessed is more than a demonstration of AI capabilities — it’s a window into a new way of thinking, what I call the Agentic Mindset. For me, these Aha Moments always occurred when I glimpsed the agent’s capacity for deep reasoning, sophisticated planning, adaptive problem-solving, or close collaboration. They were not just flashes of insight but key experiences that reshaped how I approached problem-solving with AI.
The Agentic Mindset is the realization that anyone can harness AI agents to tackle challenges across all areas of life. It’s that immediate, instinctive thought when faced with a problem: “I can build an agent that could handle this,” “I can create an agent to automate that,” or “I can develop an agent to assist with this.”
This mindset cannot be limited to a select few with specialized skills — it’s about empowering everyone to leverage AI for greater efficiency, innovation, and problem-solving, wherever it’s needed. It’s akin to adopting a Growth Mindset but applied to the realm of AI, where the possibilities are as limitless as your imagination.
By embracing the Agentic Mindset, we open up a world where AI becomes an active participant in our daily lives — an intelligent, adaptive force that not only assists us in solving problems but also enhances our ability to innovate, collaborate, and thrive.
My Agentic Mindset Journey: A Glimpse into the Evolution of Vitality AI
The timeline above captures the pivotal moments in my journey toward building Vitality AI and ultimately joining Sema4.ai. Each milestone represents a significant step in the evolution of the Agentic Mindset — a mindset driven by the need for more transparency, control, and innovation in AI-driven enterprise applications.
But this blog is just the beginning of the story. In the subsequent parts of the “Vitality AI and the Agentic Mindset” Blog Series, I’ll take you through this journey, exploring each milestone on the timeline in greater depth. Here’s what you can look forward to:
Blog 2: From Love to Frustration: OpenAI CustomGPT and the Journey to Open Cognitive Architectures
Covering Timeline Events 1, 2, and 3
This blog delves into the initial stages of developing Vitality AI, starting with the early love affair with OpenAI’s CustomGPT (Event 1) and the subsequent realization of its limitations. I then explore the shift toward open cognitive architectures (Events 2 & 3), leading to an in-depth examination of different cognitive frameworks, including LangGraph and OpenGPT. The journey culminates in transitioning from a single-agent Plan and Execute model to a more complex Multi-Agent system, setting the stage for advanced decision-making through collaboration and specialization.
Blog 3: The Multi-Agent Leap: Advanced Decision-Making and Governance in Vitality AI
Covering Timeline Event 4
This blog explores the pivotal shift to a Multi-Agent Hierarchical Planning Architecture in Vitality AI (Event 4). I’ll dive into how this architecture enabled specialized agents to work together seamlessly, delivering advanced decision-making capabilities and comprehensive insights. By examining the intricacies of multi-agent collaboration and the integration of governance through the Reflective Practitioner, I uncover the true potential of this approach for building complex, real-world enterprise AI applications.
Blog 4: Insights and Reflections: The Challenges and Future of Enterprise AI
Covering Timeline Event 5
In the final blog, I reflect on the challenges and insights gained from building Vitality AI. This blog will discuss the broader implications for enterprises and why these experiences led me to join Sema4.ai (Event 5). It will conclude the series by positioning Sema4.ai as the platform to advance the Agentic Mindset in enterprise AI.
What’s Next
In the next part of the Vitality AI and the Agentic Mindset Blog Series, we’ll explore the early development of Vitality AI. This phase began with the promising capabilities of OpenAI’s CustomGPT, which quickly became both a source of excitement and a catalyst for reevaluating my approach. As I navigated the challenges of working within a closed system, I realized the need for greater flexibility and control — insights that would ultimately guide the evolution of Vitality AI.
If you’re intrigued by the journey of Vitality AI and want to test-drive the very capabilities we’ve discussed, I encourage you to join the waitlist to gain early access and be among the first to experience its powerful capabilities. Sign up here: Sema4.ai Early Access. Sema4.ai’s Enterprise Agent Platform comes with a fully operational multi-agent AI experience, including a pre-configured version of Vitality AI, allowing you to dive into the same environment where these innovations came to life.
Stay tuned as we discuss the lessons learned from these early challenges and how they set the foundation for what was to come.
#AI #AIAgents #Sema4ai #VitalityAI #Innovation
