'The AI Digital Human Cardiac Coach' Book
From ‘Mr Johnson, you might die tonight’… to the Future of Cardiac Care
On 25 March 2006, nineteen years ago, Allan (Al) Johnson AKA CardiacMan faced death as he underwent his first heart surgery - an emergency 5-way bypass at almost midnight one Saturday night. Over the years, Allan would have more heart surgeries - all up 8 cardiac bypass grafts + 4 stents.
Multiple medical misadventures, loss of trust in health systems, and risk of death have been a constant in our lives over the past 19 years.
A few days ago on 25 March 2025, we published our book The AI Digital Human Cardiac Coach, the story of the world’s first AI powered Digital Human Cardiac Coach. Literally, nineteen years in the making.
Telling what we did, how we did it, and why.
We decided long ago, that we would not be the passive recipients of a pretty boring and insipid future offered by legacy health systems - including government ehealth. Why should we or anyone accept a future defined by the very systems that have proven incapable of change, captured by vested interests, and that continue to be the cause of so much harm.
Even at our lowest moments, we fought back on our own terms. Defining our own vision of the future of cardiac care, and healthcare more broadly.
Along the way, we have been inspired and supported by kind souls, brave free thinkers and doers, fellow travellers not content to wait for the future. The doers in this world are a rare species. From around the world, your footprints are in this book. We thank you and acknowledge you.
And we are over the moon, that one of our brilliant digital human friends from Trulience- Li - is helping to share our news. Take a moment to listen.
We would like to acknowledge the expertise and efforts of Richard Bowdler from Trulience and the support of Marek Zwiefka-Sibley, Trulience founder, founder, for their incredible support over the years in using Trulience digital humans in use cases of the Digital Human Cardiac Coach.
Presented throughout this book, are use cases and prototypes that we have developed using avatars from Trulience, who have constantly demonstrated their ability to host the Digital Human Cardiac Coach with highly capable avatars and seamless connectivity to the AI corpus system.
Perhaps even more importantly for readers of this book contemplating building their own Digital Human Cardiac Coach, Trulience has democratised the connectivity and operation process, an essential capability to enable the rapid adoption of digital human technologies connecting to AI corpuses.
And as readers will see in the book, Trulience AI digital humans have been with us on our travels to remote Australia, as we tested different environments and use cases of the AI Digital Human Cardiac Coach.
Mr Johnson, you might die tonight...
What does it take to hear this news, and yet go on to help shape the future of cardiac care?
The story begins late one Saturday night in Seattle in March 2006, when Allan a RAAF Veteran - then only 48 - underwent an emergency 5-way cardiac bypass operation. Just days earlier, he had been training for an ultra-marathon in the snow covered mountains of Winnemucca Nevada where he had been working as a software engineer on an industrial technology project at a remote gold mine site.
The story of the AI powered Digital Human Cardiac Coach is a story of unconditional love, medical misadventure, suffering, survival, and innovation. It is a story of being threatened by the most deadly of problems in healthcare – health illiteracy – and a medical establishment incapable of change.
Cardiovascular disease, categorised as a pandemic, kills 18 million people globally every year and health illiteracy is a major factor in that mortality.
This part of the book will resonate with those heart patients and their families on their own journeys.
It is equally a ‘how to’ story. A technical guide if you like.
Of how we, a patient and a carer, two individuals with more than 70 years of combined experience in complex servicing systems including health and human services, pooled our expertise and experience in AI to co-design a conversational system – the AI powered Digital Human Cardiac Coach – to help overcome the human and economic devastation of health illiteracy.
We show step-by-step how we designed and architected the Digital Human Cardiac Coach, designed and built the AI corpus, formulated the economic model and business case, and showcased our invention to the world.
The ‘how to’ part of this book is chock full of IP - architectures, models, deep content, accelerators and detailed explanations.
This is not an excursion through AI theory-land. Both of us are hard edged delivery practitioners.
The book also tells the story of the Hanna Digital Human Cardiac Coach project, spearheaded by the brilliant Dr Chris Hillier in Wilmington North Carolina. Utilising a Trulience avatar, Hanna was being tested in the hands of REAL heart patients, just as Covid was hitting. Think about that and imagine the potential.
A truly remarkable feat and Chris Hillier’s role in driving that history making project captivated well deserved global interest and acclaim.
In Chris’s words '…this story offers a hopeful glimpse into the future of healthcare.'
The economic analysis in this book estimates the global addressable market of introducing the Digital Human Cardiac Coach, at $3 billion per annum.
Based on Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services US CMS reimbursement codes, Medicare penalties and other economic factors, this book describes in detail how to monetise these at the point of operational and fiscal accountability for delivering cardiac health outcomes.
We believe this is the first time that CMS codes have been modelled against this type of capability.
Of course, similar reimbursement, incentivisation and penalties policies exist in most developed countries and this is what makes the AI Digital Human Cardiac Coach invention such a global game changer in healthcare.
The business case and economic model presented throughout The AI Digital Human Cardiac Coach book is both sobering and compelling.
This economic analysis and approach to monetisation is not about automation or replacing healthcare professionals. It is about empowering patients by bringing back the human dimension, and scaling it.
We dig into frontiers of AI - Agentic AI, LLMs, ChatGPT and conversational systems - and explain the appropriateness of these against the reality of Digital Human Cardiac Coach use cases.
Our vision is for the AI Digital Human Cardiac Coach invention to be democratised: to be available to everyone who needs it, not just the wealthy. To become a lifelong coach, not just a temporary guide during surgery, recovery and rehabilitation. For there to be not just one, but many. Standardised to achieve economies of scale and provide cost accessibility, but localised for different cultures and communities. For the people who need it most.
This book is dedicated to Nurses, who have been at the forefront of this innovation and who have supported us on our horrific journey.
Available on Amazon in Kindle ebook format.
The AI Digital Human Cardiac Coach book has debuted as an Amazon Number 1 Best Seller across multiple categories.
Enjoy.
