In a recent blog post, I asked a simple question: who would you trust more—a physician with 15 minutes of your time, or an AI that monitors your health every second of the day?

It’s a polarizing question but it’s the wrong choice to make. Healthcare doesn’t have to be "AI vs. human." The future is AI + a physician together, working as partners to deliver care that is timely, precise, and deeply personal.

We are entering the era of the Augmented Physician. Today, medicine is often practiced in snapshots: a checkup twice a year, a quick vital sign reading, a few questions about symptoms. It’s like trying to understand a two-hour movie from three random frames. It’s simply not enough.

AI could fill in the gaps. AI tracks the subtle heart rate changes, sleep patterns and environmental stressors between appointments. Then the physician can spend the time they have focused on what matters most: the human experience of care.

• AI’s role: Distills thousands of hours of physiological data into actionable insights.
• Physician’s role: Focuses on empathy, ethics, expectations, and personalized decision-making, not data entry.

The Death of the "Data Entry" Doctor

Doctors today spend far too much time as data-entry clerks, documenting in Electronic Health Record systems rather than connecting with people.

In a true partnership, AI becomes the invisible scribe, allowing the physician to focus fully on the person’s story—the subtle tremor in a hand, the worry in a voice—details that no algorithm can fully capture.

Where AI is Already Transforming Care

The shift is happening now:

• Radiology: AI flags potential tumors in seconds, enabling radiologists to focus their expertise on complex, nuanced cases.
• Chronic Disease Management: Wearables and AI-driven alerts identify potential diabetic or cardiac crises before symptoms appear.

Technology provides the data, speed and pattern recognition. Physicians provide empathy, insight and the human touch. Together, they make healthcare truly personalized.

The Bottom Line: Partnership Over Choice

Trust shouldn’t be a choice between a person and a processor.

I want a physician supported by AI that understands every heartbeat, while also knowing my story, my fears, and my family. We don’t need doctors to act like computers. We need computers to handle the complexity so doctors can finally return to their love of medicine —the way medicine was meant to be practiced.

Caring at the N of 1.

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