{"id":634673,"date":"2026-03-20T12:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T10:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=634673"},"modified":"2026-04-08T12:03:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T10:03:22","slug":"whats-next-healthbridge-founder-gerrie-van-zyl-unpacks-ai-advances-in-healthcare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/ai\/634673-whats-next-healthbridge-founder-gerrie-van-zyl-unpacks-ai-advances-in-healthcare.html","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s Next \u2014 Healthbridge founder Gerrie van Zyl unpacks AI advances in healthcare"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In this What\u2019s Next with Aki Anastasiou interview, Gerrie van Zyl discusses how AI is changing the healthcare industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Van Zyl is the Founder, Chairman, and Chief Innovation Officer of Healthbridge, a leading South African healthtech platform at the forefront of AI-driven healthcare transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He founded Healthbridge in 1999 to facilitate information flow and collaboration for the benefit of healthcare providers, patients, and funders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Under his leadership, the business has grown to become one of the largest and most innovative cloud-based healthcare platforms in Southern Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Prior to founding Healthbridge, van Zyl worked as a Strategic Advisor with Monitor Group, providing strategic counsel to executives and boards of leading companies in the telecommunications, aluminium, chemical, investment banking, and asset management industries in the USA and South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also served as an Engineer at Intelligent Automation Systems, where he worked on groundbreaking smart automation systems in the medical device and early DNA sequencing industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Van Zyl holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from Stellenbosch University and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The interview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In this What\u2019s Next interview, van Zyl describes what he and Healthbridge do and what a 25-year-old innovation lab looks like on the inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Van Zyl outlines how AI can help bridge the gap between the public and private healthcare sectors, and the practical benefits it can deliver for patient care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He then touches on how Healthbridge serves over 7,000 medical professionals, before explaining how this immense data is used and managed responsibly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Van Zyl concludes the interview by sharing the future benefits of AI in healthcare and how data sharing will become commonplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Watch the interview with Gerrie van Zyl below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"What\u2019s Next \u2013 Gerrie van Zyl on how AI could transform healthcare in South Africa\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_Okdtk-phpQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gerrie van Zyl is the Founder, Chairman, and Chief Innovation Officer of Healthbridge and has spent over three decades working in the healthcare sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":634679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92837],"tags":[27887,5224,103924,102259,26464,65345,65351],"class_list":["post-634673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-aki-anastasiou","tag-gerrie-van-zyl","tag-healthbridge","tag-healthcare","tag-whats-next","tag-whats-next-with-aki-anastasiou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634673"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634673"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":634709,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634673\/revisions\/634709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}