Health Technology

Physicians writing on KevinMD about the technology in the exam room: the electronic record and what it did to the visit, meaningful use, alert fatigue, pajama time, human and AI scribes and whether they give time back, ambient documentation, telemedicine, and what AI can do in clinical practice now and who is responsible when it is wrong. Two maintained records draw on this archive: The electronic health record: what physicians say, in their own words and Artificial intelligence: what physicians say, in their own words.

Clinical AI cannot reason over a billing document

Brian Hudes, MD

Health Technology

September 10, 2026

Two good arguments about clinical AI have appeared here recently, and between them they have accounted for almost everything except the part that matters most.

Harvey Castro has argued that the real limitation is not the model but the context, pointing to the blood pressure entered three minutes ago and the allergy buried in yesterday’s note that the system cannot see. Miguel Venereo has argued that the record itself is fragmented, …

AI psychosis is not schizophrenia. The difference matters.

Nicole Drapeau Gillen

Health Technology

September 9, 2026

Psychiatry is now asking a question that would have sounded like science fiction three years ago: Should “AI psychosis” become a clinical diagnosis?

Researchers at King’s College London, led by doctoral fellow Hamilton Morrin, have just published a preprint examining more than a dozen cases in which sustained conversation with AI chatbots appears to have triggered or deepened delusional thinking. It follows the cases I’ve written about in …

Who is left to supervise AI in low-resource settings?

Dr. Buga Charles George Kenyi

Health Technology

September 9, 2026

As a frontline physician in South Sudan, I see approximately two hundred patients on call day across two public hospitals. Discussions about agentic AI often assume that every autonomous system will operate under the supervision of experienced specialists. That assumption reflects the reality of high-income health systems, but not mine.

In our pediatric referral hospital, the hematology-oncology service is staffed by only two hematologists. In the adult referral hospital where I …

Clinical judgment matters more in the age of AI

Dr. Adam Widdison

Health Technology

September 9, 2026

The more capable AI becomes at answering clinical questions, the more important it is to ask whether we are asking the right questions. Medicine is not becoming less human; if anything, it is becoming more dependent on the human qualities it has always needed: judgment, responsibility, and the ability to act with care amid uncertainty. AI may change how information is delivered, but it does not decide what matters. That …

Patient trust in AI is not proof the advice is right

Timothy Lesaca, MD

Health Technology

September 8, 2026

“Can you make this sound less demanding?” A patient types the question into a chatbot while trying to write a message to her doctor. She wants to ask why a test was ordered and whether she should be worried, but she does not want to come across as difficult. She describes the appointment. Then she adds what she did not say at the time: that she left frightened, has been …

Why prompt engineering in medicine beats picking a model

Vinson James, MD

Health Technology

September 8, 2026

It was a quiet Sunday morning, coffee on the desk, and I was doing what most residents do at some point in their training: grinding through multiple-choice questions (MCQs) for my in-training exam. I had been using large language models (LLMs) as study partners for weeks. ChatGPT to walk through a tricky electrolyte case. Gemini for a second opinion on a renal physiology question I couldn’t square. DeepSeek when I …

Patient trust in AI starts with human accountability

Harvey Castro, MD, MBA

Health Technology

September 7, 2026

Patients are hearing more about artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine. Some are excited. Some are worried. Many are unsure what it means when a clinician, hospital, insurer, or digital health company says AI is being used in their care. That uncertainty matters.

Trust is not created by telling patients that a tool is advanced. Trust is created when patients understand what is happening, why it is happening, who is responsible, and …

The real risk of AI replacing doctors is not accuracy

Andrey Espinoza, MD

Health Technology

September 6, 2026

I need to say something uncomfortable, and I need to say it as someone who has spent a career arguing the opposite.

Right now, AI has made me a better physician. Not marginally. Dramatically. It sharpens my differential before I’ve finished the sentence. It catches the arrhythmia pattern I might have glossed over on a busy afternoon. It lets me spend less time hunting through a chart and more time with …

Incomplete medical records are the real AI blind spot

Miguel Venereo, MD

Health Technology

September 6, 2026

A patient comes to you with a story you’ve heard in countless variations. She’s seen a nurse practitioner at an urgent care, a rheumatologist two states away when she was between jobs, and, more recently, an AI symptom checker that told her it was probably stress. By the time she’s in the exam room, you have maybe fifteen minutes, and a chart that reflects exactly one of those encounters.

During several …

AI was the chief resident for my physician job search

Brian Hudes, MD

Health Technology

September 5, 2026

Physicians are trained to manage complexity under time pressure. We carry twenty patients, track a dozen pending studies, remember which consultant owes us a callback, and keep it straight. Then we go looking for a job and manage the whole thing out of an inbox and a legal pad.

A hospital-employed position search generates a startling volume of material: recruiter emails, competing time zones, credentialing packets, site visit logistics, contract drafts …

AI strategy for hospitals: the 5 mistakes boards make

Harvey Castro, MD, MBA

Health Technology

September 5, 2026

Artificial intelligence is no longer a future issue for hospital boards. It is already affecting clinical documentation, patient communication, revenue cycle operations, imaging, scheduling, research, cybersecurity, and physician workflow. In many organizations, AI is entering through the side door before leadership has created a clear strategy. That is risky.

A hospital does not need an AI strategy because AI is fashionable. It needs one because unmanaged AI creates clinical, operational, legal, …

AI in utilization management is solving the wrong problem

Heather Bassett, MD

Health Technology

September 5, 2026

A few weeks ago, I found myself somewhere past 100 kilometers into The Rift, a 140-kilometer gravel cycling race through Iceland, wondering exactly why I had thought this was a good idea.

The scenery was spectacular. We rode through black volcanic landscapes, past mountains and rivers, across terrain that at times appeared so stunning, it looked fake. I felt incredibly lucky just to be there and to have the opportunity to …

Trust in health care AI is a design problem, not a patch

Matt Hasan, PhD

Health Technology

September 4, 2026

A patient sits across from her physician and asks that the AI-assisted reading of her scan not be the final word. She isn’t opposed to technology. She remembers reading about an AI system generating false clinical information at another hospital, and the story stayed with her. Her physician understands the hesitation. He has become more cautious himself after a documentation tool fabricated part of a medication history, an error he …

AI in scientific writing: Assistance is not authorship

Rao M. Uppu, PhD

Health Technology

September 4, 2026

Most scientists I know have several unfinished manuscripts at any given time. I am no exception. Some of mine concern recent work; others are based on research completed years ago, and, in a few cases, decades ago.

I vividly remember a senior colleague at the National Institute of Nutrition who served as my supervisor for a couple of years. He would often show me, with great enthusiasm, a stack of over …

7 rules for how physicians should use AI responsibly

Harvey Castro, MD, MBA

Health Technology

September 4, 2026

Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering medicine faster than many physicians expected. It is already helping draft notes, summarize records, answer patient questions, support imaging workflows, and organize clinical data. Some tools are useful. Some are premature. Many are somewhere in between.

The question for physicians is no longer whether AI will appear in clinical care. It already has. The real question is how to use it without giving away the judgment …

Augmented intelligence is the model education needs

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

Health Technology

September 3, 2026

Harvard’s decision to dismantle its Writing Center as an independent entity and to lay off its longtime director, Jane Rosenzweig, has sparked an unusual level of anger. Students, faculty, former tutors, and alums have protested a decision that might otherwise have slipped into the fog of administrative restructuring.

The controversy is about more than a single employee or even a single writing center. It raises a much larger question: What …

Clinical AI should replace workflows, not physicians

Harvey Castro, MD, MBA

Health Technology

September 2, 2026

Every few months, the news runs with a headline about artificial intelligence replacing doctors. A model passes an exam. A chatbot answers a patient question. A system summarizes a chart or reads an image. The debate starts again.

Will AI replace physicians? I think that is the wrong question. The better question is: Which parts of modern medical work should never have been placed on physicians in the first place?

Doctors are …

Why the AI therapy law will not protect your patients

Nicole Drapeau Gillen

Health Technology

September 2, 2026

California’s SB 903 cleared the legislature on August 31, with the Assembly concurring in Senate amendments by a vote of 40 to 0. It now sits on Governor Newsom’s desk. Assuming he signs it, it’s a real, needed law: It bars companies from advertising AI products as “therapy,” and it puts disclosure, consent, and human-oversight requirements around AI used inside licensed clinical care.

When I wrote about this bill back …

Can AI in risk adjustment be trusted to code accurately?

Kate Marta

Health Technology

September 2, 2026

Health care’s relationship with artificial intelligence (AI) often swings between two extremes: enthusiasm and anxiety. On one hand, AI is helping clinicians reduce administrative work, uncover relevant information buried in medical records, and identify opportunities to improve patient care. On the other, regulators are becoming increasingly concerned about how AI is used in high-stakes decisions that affect payment, compliance, and patient outcomes.

In February 2026, the Office of Inspector General …

AI in hospital medicine can give hospitalists time back

Bahnsen Miller, MD

Health Technology

September 2, 2026

It has been 30 years since the term “hospitalist” was introduced, and while the specialty has grown into one of the fastest-growing medical specialties in the United States, it now faces a defining inflection point. Excessive bureaucratic tasks, financial pressures, escalating documentation demands, and the growing burden of electronic health records (EHRs) are often cited as primary drivers of burnout, affecting over one-third of hospitalists. As an example, hospitalists spend …

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