29 June 2026

Why the Future Is Geriatric: The Maths and the Model | Jugdeep Dhesi

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Episode Summary

The future of health and care is geriatric for two reasons.

First, the maths. Two thirds of UK hospital beds are already filled by people over 65, and 40 percent of emergency visits are older people. Get care right for them and you get it right for the NHS.

Second, the model. The way geriatrics has always worked, treating the whole person across many conditions rather than one disease at a time, joined up across hospital and home, is exactly what an AI and data enabled system is built to scale. AI doesn't replace the geriatric approach. It's what finally makes it possible everywhere. And once you see it, it's really hard to unsee. In 10 to 15 years, the way we care for older people may look nothing like it does today.

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In this episode of Health In Hyperdrive, my guest is the brilliant Professor Jugdeep Dhesi, President of the British Geriatrics Society and Professor of Geriatric Medicine at King's College London, for a conversation that might change how you think about where health and care is heading.

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Key Topics Covered

  • Why older people are now the biggest users of health and social care, and why getting it right for them means getting it right for the NHS

  • Why the future is geriatric for two reasons, the maths of an ageing population and the geriatric model being exactly what an AI enabled system can scale

  • Why geriatrics already does what the rest of medicine is racing towards, treating the whole person across many conditions at once, not one disease at a time

  • How hospital level care is now delivered in people's own homes, and the evidence that it is better for patients and cheaper for the system

  • How the electronic frailty index uses everyday primary care data to find people living with frailty early, so they can be helped sooner

  • How real world data, not just clinical trials, is surfacing things we would otherwise miss, like the link between the shingles vaccine and lower dementia risk

  • How AI could build a complete picture of an individual patient's medical, functional, social and psychological needs

  • Why the role of the doctor is about to change, from holding all the knowledge to interpreting it and having better conversations with patients and families

  • The 10 to 15 year vision, and why the future is geriatric, for two reasons: the maths and the model

Links

About Jugdeep

President, British Geriatrics Society

Professor Jugdeep Dhesi is President of the British Geriatrics Society and Professor of Geriatric Medicine at King's College London.

A consultant geriatrician at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, she led the development of the award-winning POPS service (Perioperative medicine for Older People undergoing Surgery), a model now adopted across the NHS and internationally.

She is Deputy Director for the Centre for Perioperative Care and a leading voice on shaping national policy and practice for an ageing population.