July AI Meetup - AI in Healthcare & Agri-Food Industries

Generic AI advice only takes you so far. The real adoption work happens inside specific industries, where the stakes, the data, the regulations, and the people are unlike any other vertical. This month, we go deep into two of them.

Rowena Woolgar will share what responsible AI delivery looks like inside healthcare — from clinical reasoning to national system integration. Dr Harold Mayaba will show how AI is being applied inside agri-food and market intelligence to identify real opportunities and improve strategic decisions. Drinks, demos, and practical takeaways included.

Meet up with your local AI community on the Second Monday of July at EPIC Innovation:

5:30–6:00 pm — Drinks & Networking
6:00–6:45 pm — AI Is Not Neutral: Designing Healthcare AI for Real Work, Real Risk — Rowena Woolgar
6:45–7:30 pm — AI in Agri-Food: Real Opportunities and Smarter Growth — Dr Harold Mayaba
7:30–8:00 pm — Drinks & Open Q&A

This month's Meetup dives into two industry verticals where AI is already changing how decisions get made: healthcare and agri-food.

AI Is Not Neutral: Designing Healthcare AI for Real Work, Real Risk — Rowena Woolgar
AI in healthcare is never just a technical decision. It reshapes judgement, accountability, and trust. This session explores how AI must be designed and implemented differently across healthcare roles, from administrators and clinicians through to multidisciplinary teams, service delivery, and national system integration.

Drawing on real-world healthcare experience across local, national, and international services, Rowena traces how AI can safely support administrative flow, augment clinical reasoning, and scale insight across services without eroding safety or equity. The discussion extends to managerial and system-level considerations, including national datasets, governance, and service commissioning.

In this session, you will learn:

• How AI must be designed differently across healthcare roles and contexts
• Where AI can safely support administrative, clinical, and system-level work
• What national datasets, governance, and commissioning require from AI
• Why transparency, ethics, and human-centred design are non-negotiable
• What responsible AI delivery actually looks like in practice

AI in Agri-Food: Real Opportunities and Smarter Growth — Dr Harold Mayaba
Agri-food is one of New Zealand's most strategically important industries, and one where AI adoption is still uneven. Dr Harold Mayaba is an Agri-Food and Market Consultant, motivational speaker, and coach with a PhD in Applied Economics from Lincoln University. He works at the intersection of AI, market intelligence, consumer behaviour, business growth, and human resilience.

Harold has been building practical AI systems for the agri-food sector that help producers, exporters, and organisations focus on real opportunities, sharpen market positioning, and improve decision-making. In this session, he will show how AI can move beyond hype to become a working tool inside agri-food and adjacent industries — solving real problems, surfacing real opportunities, and supporting smarter strategic growth.

You will learn:

• How AI is being applied inside agri-food and market intelligence
• Where AI sharpens decisions in producer, exporter, and consumer-facing work
• How market signals and consumer behaviour data become AI-driven advantage
• How non-technical professionals in primary industries can start using AI
• Examples from working AI systems already in use across the sector

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When: Monday, 13 July, 5:30–8:00 pm
Where: EPIC Innovation, Christchurch
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Sponsored by the AI Coaching Academy. Come have some 🍻 beer and wine🍷 and raise a glass with your local AI Community!
https://ai-coaching.academy/