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AI won’t replace doctors anytime soon. Despite the clickbait headlines and the reports of chatbots outperforming doctors on this-or-that clinical task, medicine will always depend—literally and figuratively—on human touch.
What’s interesting, though, is how AI seems to be improving that human touch.
Thanks to notetaking apps, doctors can stop typing and be more present in the precious minutes they spend with patients. AI-powered workflows are eliminating hours of admin work, easing care team burnout and freeing up clinicians to flex their human expertise where it’s needed most. ChatGPT is even coaching doctors on their bedside manner. Far from replacing them, AI is rehumanizing doctors and the patient experience.
The hard work of accessing healthcare
This melding of artificial and (human) emotional intelligence—which I call AI+EQ—is unlocking a new golden age in healthcare. The very best doctors and nurses have always had a rare mix of experience, expertise, empathy, and emotional intelligence. But before AI, that secret sauce was near-impossible to bottle up and scale. That’s exactly what we’re doing now. Recent advances in generative AI, building on decades of innovation in machine learning and big data, are putting healthcare’s collective wisdom and horsepower into the hands of care teams everywhere, with far-reaching implications for medical education, clinical practice, and patient care.
Here’s the catch, though: The 15 minutes (or less) that people spend with their doctor is a sliver of the overall healthcare experience. The rest of the time is spent in a maze of paperwork, logistics, unanswered questions, and financial stress. Choosing a health plan during open enrollment. Searching for in-network physicians. Deciphering deductibles and copays—and then, a few weeks later, deciphering bills and statements. Sitting on hold with your health plan, waiting in line at the pharmacy, and then waiting months (if you’re lucky) for another 15 minutes with your doctor.
This is the hard, frustrating work of accessing and navigating healthcare. It makes people give up, disengage, and delay essential care, which is making us sicker and driving healthcare costs through the roof.
Too little EQ
AI+EQ is just as critical here as it is in the doctor’s office. AI might be helping doctors become more human, but that will only take us so far if the rest of the system remains inefficient, impersonal, and dehumanizing. People want high-quality healthcare that’s simple, personalized, and fast. Delivering that experience, at scale, will require baking EQ—not just AI—into every layer of the system, from face time with doctors to the vast amounts of data generated by those face-to-face interactions and everything in between.
Startups and established stakeholders will say they’re working on it. Health insurers are using AI to streamline claims processing and prior authorization. Navigation vendors are deploying chatbots to steer people to in-network physicians. Point solutions and digital health apps are using nudges to track patients and promote treatment adherence. Everybody—and I mean everybody—is using AI, or claiming to. (Except in this article, which is 100% human.)
But as I look across the industry, I see a lot of AI and very little EQ.
Be remembered as a person
Too much innovation is happening in the same old silos. So much AI firepower is being deployed, and so little of it is connected or working in sync. We’re recreating—this time with chatbots—the same painful experience: filling out forms again and again, ferrying info from your doctor to your insurer (and back), logging into a dozen different apps. People basically now have a healthcare supercomputer on their smartphone, but they still need to introduce themselves to the system over and over, because the back end is as fragmented as ever. The friendliest chatbot in the world can only help you so much if it’s not talking to the other bots.
The essence of a positive healthcare experience is feeling seen and heard—and remembered—as a whole person, not as a user ID or a number in a system.
When you call to ask about a hospital bill, the person on the phone already knows who you are, and which benefits you have. Your PCP knows your cardiologist just prescribed a new medication. Your diabetes coach knows you have a therapy appointment next week. This type of holistic, integrated care depends on holistic, integrated data and systems—specifically, systems powered by AI and designed with EQ.
How to implement AI+EQ
What does AI+EQ look like at the systems level? First, it means building platforms and partnerships that break down data silos to thoughtfully (and securely) connect clinical insights, medical and pharmacy claims, info on social and financial context, and the myriad other data points that help us build a three-dimensional picture of individuals.
Second, it means making that data visible and available to the entire team—not just doctors and nurses, but also pharmacists, case managers, advocates, support staff, and yes, chatbots—so they’re all looking at the same 3D person and can seamlessly communicate and collaborate.
Third, and most important, the whole system needs to be led and overseen by clinicians, partnering with engineers and data scientists to use their collective EQ to ensure that AI models and algorithms are evidence-based, free from bias, informed by human empathy and expertise, and built to deliver optimal clinical and financial outcomes for everyone involved: patients, providers, and purchasers.
If we want to create a modern and personalized healthcare experience, the doctor’s office is just the tip of the iceberg. The real transformation will flow from the hard work deep below the surface to ensure that AI and EQ are coming together system-wide to deliver the healthcare experience we humans have all been waiting for.
Owen Tripp is cofounder and CEO of Included Health.
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