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Surgeon and health tech strategist Sarah Matt discusses her article “Why fee-for-service reform is needed.” Sarah analyzes the friction between efficient digital health tools and an outdated payment system that rewards activity …
Overcoming the economic barriers of fee-for-service medicine [PODCAST]
Not long ago in a community intensive care unit (ICU) in a mid-sized American city, I cared for a sick young woman who had just delivered a baby. Part of the placenta, which is supposed to be fully expelled following delivery, remained in her uterus. This condition, known as “retained products of conception,” provided an opportunity for bacteria to infect the retained tissue. The infection spread from her uterus to …
Why tele-critical care fails the sickest ICU patients
On January 6, 2026, the FDA announced revised guidance that loosens oversight for certain AI-enabled digital health products, most notably clinical decision support (CDS) software. The goal was to cut unnecessary regulation and promote innovation, accelerating time-to-market for tools positioned as clinical assistants rather than autonomous decision-makers.
At first glance, the change looks pragmatic, even overdue. For years, developers and clinicians alike have complained that prior FDA interpretations forced artificial …
FDA loosens AI oversight: What clinicians need to know about the 2026 guidance
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Health care executive Dave Wessinger discusses their article “How to adopt AI in health care responsibly.” Dave explains why organizations must move beyond the hype of artificial intelligence to focus on measurable …
Focusing on outcomes over novelty prevents AI failure in health care [PODCAST]
Primary care providers and primary care medicine are on the downswing in the U.S., burdened with increasing demands of documentation and numerous complicated quality programs in the face of rapidly diminishing reimbursements. While the tribe is disappearing fast, enter its newest nemesis: artificial intelligence (AI).
You might wonder why AI is detrimental to primary care and primary care physicians. The common notion is that physicians, including primary care physicians, will be …
Will AI replace primary care physicians?
I have spent my career practicing medicine in the real world: caring for patients, managing uncertainty, and making decisions where the stakes are personal and immediate. In recent years, I have also spent considerable time designing and deploying medical software that uses artificial intelligence in live clinical environments. Together, these experiences have reshaped how I think about the future of our profession.
That combination of experiences has led me to a …
AI in medicine: Why it won’t replace doctors but will redefine them
Last week, I spent over two hours on a prior authorization for a patient who needed a medication she’d been stable on for years. Two hours of hold music, transferred calls, and faxed forms, while patients waited.
That same week, Anthropic announced Claude for Healthcare: An AI system that can verify coverage requirements, build claims appeals, and streamline prior authorizations in minutes. OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health days earlier. Both promise to …
Claude for Healthcare vs. administrative burden: a physician’s review
We’ve been thinking about remote patient monitoring (RPM) the wrong way.
Picture this. A patient comes home from the hospital after a cardiac scare. They’ve got a smart scale on their chest, maybe a blood pressure cuff on the counter, and a nurse scheduled to stop by later in the week. The care team, the patient, and the tech are all working together in the hopes that things don’t get worse.
The …
Why remote patient monitoring needs a preventive shift
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly entering clinical spaces, and ChatGPT is among the tools drawing increasing interest. Hospitals recognize their potential to reduce administrative burden, improve communication, and support clinical decision-making.
But with this potential comes responsibility. Deploying large language models (LLMs) in health care without proper oversight can lead to misinformation, privacy breaches, and erosion of patient trust. Before implementation, hospitals must establish a framework grounded in safety, ethics, and …
ChatGPT Health in hospitals: 5 essential safety protocols
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Health care executive Jason Griffin discusses his article “The digital divide in rural health care.” Jason explains how rural providers in the U.S. face critical infrastructure failures and staffing shortages that threaten …
Collaborative partnerships save rural health care from collapse [PODCAST]
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Physician executive Christina Johns discusses her article “Modernizing health care with AI and workflow.” Christina explains how clinicians in the U.S. are facing unprecedented burnout due to administrative burdens that detract from …
Artificial intelligence offers a lifeline to overwhelmed clinicians [PODCAST]
“The danger isn’t that AI is too powerful; it’s that we stop questioning it.”
Artificial intelligence in medicine is often described as revolutionary, capable of diagnosing disease, predicting deterioration, and automating once-human decisions. But I want to suggest a different lens, one drawn not from technology, but from history.
Let’s go back to ancient Greece.
There, leaders turned to the Oracle of Delphi not for …
AI in medicine risks: the new Oracle of Delphi?
In basketball, when a player is called for a questionable foul, he may shrug and say: “Ball don’t lie.”
It means the game has a truth of its own. Reality asserts itself. Emergency medicine, unfortunately, rarely works that way.
We once spent most of our time with patients. Now a substantial portion of every shift is spent interacting with a screen, not because we prefer it, but because the system has evolved …
EMR cognitive burden: the hidden cost of documentation
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At this point, numerous individuals have become engaged with ChatGPT. We’ve asked it to summarize a complex patient history and draft a discharge summary or explanation of a rare clinical concept. At first, it feels like magic. However, after several weeks, that same old feeling of frustration returns. Why does this still feel like more work?
The problem is not that technology is lacking. The problem is that ChatGPT was never …
Agentic AI in medicine: Moving beyond ChatGPT
For decades, medicine has spoken the language of hazard ratios, Kaplan-Meier curves, and median survival differences. We have become fluent in the grammar of precision oncology, genomic signatures, driver mutations, targeted therapeutics, and real-time disease monitoring. But there is one language we have not yet mastered: the language of the patient’s lived experience.
Personalized medicine cannot stop at matching the right drug to the right tumor. It must also include personalized …
Personalized scientific communication: the patient experience
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Orthopedic surgeon Kevin J. Campbell discusses his article “Health care is having its Yahoo moment.” Kevin explains how the current medical system is stuck in an obsolete pipeline model similar to early …
Artificial intelligence ends the dangerous cycle of delayed patient care [PODCAST]
Laura, my department chair, is relentless in her enthusiasm for ambient AI systems in clinical care. Daily emails, weekly reminders, and even personal demonstrations; she’s convinced this is the future of medicine. Watching her, I can’t help but feel both admiration and unease. Her excitement is genuine, but I wonder if we’re rushing toward something we don’t fully understand.
And in many ways, she’s right. There’s a quiet joy in having …
The loss of storytelling with ambient AI systems
Across society, AI is being adopted at an staggering rate. In medicine in particular, AI is helping physicians analyze diagnostic tests, calculate disease risk, summarize patient history, and formulate treatment plans. Health care administrators are using AI to manage and optimize workflows. Insurance companies report that AI is improving consumer service, expediting claims, and detecting fraud. AI-assisted medical research is discovering new drugs to combat Parkinson’s, …
The consequences of adopting AI in medicine
The denial came back in less than three seconds.
A physician had just submitted a renewal for a medication her patient had taken for years, one that kept her stable, out of the hospital, and able to function. She expected the usual wait time. Maybe an hour. Maybe a day.
Instead, an automated message appeared: “Denied: automated appropriateness determination.”
No reviewer. No rationale. No path for appeal. Only an algorithm, silent, opaque, and …
AI in prior authorization: the new gatekeeper
When I trained in medicine, the learning path was predictable. Long nights of memorizing anatomy. Standing beside seasoned physicians in hospital hallways. Slowly absorbing the craft of diagnosis through repetition and proximity. It was an apprenticeship built on pattern recognition, intuition, and accumulated wisdom.
What I did not learn was how to practice medicine in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence. That education came much later. It arrived quietly at …
Why AI in medicine elevates humanity instead of replacing it
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