Ara Feinstein is a trauma surgeon and physician executive, Banner Health.

The parallel evolution of computer chess and AI in health care: the inevitable journey to embracing cognitive inferiority

Physician
September 24, 2025

As an academic trauma surgeon and intensive care physician, I have spent decades honing my clinical skills and teaching them to others. The recent milestone reached by Microsoft’s new AI system, the MAI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO), is a reminder that the cognitive frontier of medicine is shifting, not gradually, but in leaps. MAI-DxO reportedly diagnosed complex cases from the New England Journal of Medicine with eighty percent accuracy, compared to …

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The parallel evolution of computer chess and AI in health care: the inevitable journey to embracing cognitive inferiority

5 tips on choosing the right medical specialty for you

Physician
January 4, 2020

As a practicing surgeon that has one foot in the world of teaching and the other in corporate health care delivery, I enjoy speaking to students and residents about the future. We often discuss topics like the shift from volume to value, consolidation, insurance models, and specialization.

Often this information is new to them, and overwhelmingly they ask some form of the question: “How will this affect my career?” The following …

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5 tips on choosing the right medical specialty for you

Work getting you down? What you watch on TV might be making it worse.

Physician
August 19, 2019

As a trauma surgeon, it’s my job to diagnose and fix the violent destruction of the human body. One of the questions I get asked very frequently is, “How do you deal with that?” My standard answer is, “After a while, you get used to it.”

And while I recognize there is some truth to that, lately I’ve been more honest with myself about the emotional toll that violence …

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Work getting you down? What you watch on TV might be making it worse.

A trauma surgeon reflects on the Yale System, 20 years later

Education
June 14, 2019

The best lens for reflection is to be immersed in the places and people that spawned those memories. Why else would reunions matter? Twenty years after we graduated the Yale School of Medicine, I found myself on campus embracing my classmates again. But it didn’t take long before I felt something creeping up behind the celebratory mood. Amid storytelling and laughter, I couldn’t help reflecting on some of the more …

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A trauma surgeon reflects on the Yale System, 20 years later

It’s not hard to do surgery, it’s hard to get to do surgery

Education
May 13, 2013

boards

We were instructed not to knock, that the examiners would invite us in when they were ready. Even under the bright lights and unforgiving atmosphere of an operating room emergency, I couldn’t recall being this nervous. Yet today, in the dimly lit hallway of a three-star hotel, my hands trembled without a bleeding patient or sharp instrument anywhere nearby. I glanced left …

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It’s not hard to do surgery, it’s hard to get to do surgery