By the time Dr. Severence MacLaughlin was helping major healthcare organizations deploy artificial intelligence at scale, he had already lived several professional lives.
He had grown up on a sheep-and-turkey farm in rural Rhode Island. He had waited tables to support himself. He had worked with massive datasets on mainframe computers halfway around the world. He had advised global corporations and nonprofits on advanced analytics. And yet, for all that experience, he still felt something was missing.
“I was just moving money from one account to another,” MacLaughlin says. “I wasn’t improving anyone’s health.”
Today, as founder and CEO of DeLorean AI, he is doing exactly that, building predictive technologies designed to help doctors detect chronic disease years earlier, intervene more precisely, and ultimately extend lives.
A Beginning Far From Silicon Valley
MacLaughlin’s story begins far from research labs and venture capital pitch rooms. He was raised on a working sheep-and-turkey farm in rural Rhode Island by parents who did not have the opportunity nor attended college but instilled in him a deep belief in the power of education.
Motivated by that upbringing, he set his sights on higher learning early. After graduating from Bishop Hendricken High School, he applied to just one college, Cornell University, because it had the largest dairy farm, and he was accepted. There, he discovered a passion for research and data, an interest that eventually took him to Australia during the early 2000’s to complete his graduate studies and Ph.D. while working with datasets so massive they required mainframe computing. It was during this period that a foundational question began to take shape.
“Why aren’t organizations using data to make better decisions?” he wondered. “Especially in healthcare, where the stakes are so high.”
From Consulting to Crisis
After returning to the United States, MacLaughlin entered the consulting world, balancing side projects with restaurant work as he built his reputation. In 2009, he founded a strategic analytics practice within a consulting firm, followed by MacLaughlin Global five years later.
His expertise soon led to leadership roles with major organizations, including the American Red Cross and Cognizant Technology Solutions, where he served as Global Head of AI for Healthcare & Life Sciences. By most measures, he had “made it.” But professionally successful did not mean personally fulfilled.
“I was solving business problems,” he says. “Not human ones.”
Then came two profound losses: the deaths of his father and a close friend. The experiences forced him to confront what he wanted his work to mean.
“I realized I didn’t want to spend the rest of my career optimizing systems that didn’t directly help people live longer, healthier lives,” he says.
Building DeLorean AI
MacLaughlin made a bold decision. He invested his own savings into developing an artificial intelligence platform focused entirely on predictive medicine. The goal was ambitious: create a system that could analyze massive volumes of clinical data to identify early warning signs of chronic disease, guide physicians toward better interventions, and prevent costly, and often avoidable, hospitalizations. That vision became DeLorean AI.
Based in Palm Beach, the company deploys clinically validated tools that focus on five major disease areas: cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, COPD, and depression. The platform continuously analyzes patient data to stratify risk in real time, forecast disease progression, and recommend next clinical steps.
“If the technology exists to predict chronic disease,” MacLaughlin says, “we have a moral obligation to use it.”
Turning Data Into Decisions
At the core of DeLorean AI’s approach is scale. MacLaughlin’s models are trained on more than 80 million patient records and supported by seven patents. That foundation allows the system to detect subtle patterns that would be nearly impossible for clinicians to identify manually.
In practice, the technology helps healthcare providers answer critical questions:
Who is most likely to deteriorate in the next six months? Which patients are at risk of hospitalization? What interventions are most likely to work right now?
The results have been significant. According to company data, DeLorean AI’s platform has reduced adverse outcomes by more than 27 percent within the first 90 days of deployment and by 50% within a year. In clinical settings where physicians follow the system’s recommended actions, nearly all patients avoid hospitalization. For MacLaughlin, these aren’t just performance metrics.
“This isn’t about preventing admissions,” he says. “It’s about giving people more hugs, more birthdays, more holidays, more time with their families.”
A Different Kind of Healthtech Founder
In a startup ecosystem often dominated by software-first founders, MacLaughlin occupies a different lane. He brings deep technical expertise, firsthand experience inside large healthcare systems, and a personal mission shaped by loss. Rather than positioning AI as a replacement for clinicians, DeLorean AI is built as a decision-support partner.
“The physician is always in charge,” MacLaughlin emphasizes. “Our job is to give them better information, earlier.”
That philosophy has helped the company gain traction with hospitals and healthcare networks looking for practical, implementable solutions, not experimental tools.
Looking Ahead: From B2B to the Patient
While DeLorean AI has primarily focused on enterprise partnerships, MacLaughlin’s long-term vision extends further. The company is preparing to expand into additional disease areas and explore direct-to-patient engagement models, allowing individuals to better understand and manage their own health risks.
“Preventive care shouldn’t start when someone is already sick,” he says. “It should start when we can still change the outcome.”
That future, he believes, is one where predictive medicine becomes standard practice rather than a specialized add-on.
Staying Grounded
Despite leading a fast-growing healthtech company, MacLaughlin remains closely connected to his roots. He still credits his parents’ work ethic for shaping his approach to leadership. He still frames success in terms of impact rather than valuation.
For Dr. Severence MacLaughlin, the journey from farm fields to artificial intelligence has never been about prestige or disruption for its own sake. It has been about building tools that help people live longer, healthier lives, one prediction at a time.
