Definition
PHI (Protected Health Information)
Protected health information, the category of personal health data governed by HIPAA.
From the episode “He Quit Venture Capital to Build an AI Workforce for Patients”How founders on the podcast use it
Employee health data that legally cannot be exposed to third-party LLMs or unsecured systems.
Stop Doing Your Own HRHear it on the podcast2 episodes
Learn the language of AI-native founders
Every week: the new terms, tools, and workflows founders are using, straight from the podcast.
Related terms in Health & Science
Pearl Below the MattressesA metaphor for the buried root cause of a medical condition: the real origin is hidden beneath layers of symptoms, partial records, and institutional blind spots — like the pea beneath twenty mattresses in the fairy tale. Effective diagnosis requires systematically removing each layer rather than treating the surface presentation. Haresh Patel's own tinnitus resolved when a chiropractor found and corrected a spinal misalignment from a fall years earlier — not advanced technology, just looking at the right layer.PeptideA short chain of amino acids that transmits biological signals. Insulin, GLP-1 drugs, and growth hormone secretagogues are all peptides.PharmacogenomicsThe study of how an individual's genetic makeup affects their response to drugs — determining which medications will be effective, which will be ineffective, and which may cause adverse reactions for a specific patient. Part of the broader personalized medicine movement. As genetic sequencing costs collapse and AI accelerates biomarker interpretation, pharmacogenomics enables physicians to prescribe based on individual biology rather than population-average clinical trial results. Eugene identifies this as a near-term frontier for AI-assisted healthcare, particularly for diseases like cancer that are inherently personalized.PharmacokineticsThe study of how a drug moves through the body over time, including absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion. Critical for understanding why GLP-1 doses stack and require careful titration.PIAACThe Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, an international survey of adult literacy, numeracy, and problem solving.PMA (premarket approval)The FDA's most stringent device pathway, and the review track Grail's Galleri test is on.Polyphasic sleepBreaking sleep into multiple blocks across a day. Higgins and Kalanovska tried it running San Francisco and London hours simultaneously. It cost him his attention span.Polysomnography (PSG)The overnight hospital sleep study. Sixteen to twenty-six sensors, all-night signal capture, then a certified human scores every thirty seconds of the night for wake, sleep, and sleep stage. The reference standard everything else is measured against.