In 2018, we’ve tracked AI edging its way into many corners of healthcare, primarily in diagnostics but also in patient monitoring, selecting dosing regimens, and drug development.

Well, here’s a new one for you—an AI program that loves crappy healthcare software.

When Sean Lane, a former NSA operative who served five tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, first entered into the healthcare-AI arena, he was overwhelmed with data silos, systems that don’t speak to each other, and many, many portals and screens.

“I was not going to create another screen,” Lane told a packed room on Monday at ApplySci’s annual health technology conference at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

Instead, Lane and a team taught an AI system to use software that already exists in healthcare just like a human would use it. They named it Olive.