Artificial intelligence is moving into healthcare faster than many of us probably realize.
It is already being used to help analyze information, summarize records, assist with administrative tasks, support clinical decision-making and identify patterns that might otherwise be missed. At the same time, the idea of allowing AI anywhere near something as personal and consequential as our health makes many people uncomfortable.
And honestly, I think both reactions are reasonable.
AI has enormous potential in healthcare. It also comes with risks we shouldn’t minimize.
I recently had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky on Energize & Revitalize about the psychology of AI, how humans interact with these systems, and what happens when we begin relying on artificial intelligence to help us make decisions.
One of the most striking parts of our conversation was hearing Gleb talk about how AI saved his life. He put his symptoms into an AI system and it immediately advised him to go to the emergency room. He had a life threatening blood clot that left untreated could have been fatal.
That story made the potential of AI in healthcare very personal.
It also made me think about an important question:
How do we take advantage of what AI can do without giving it more authority than it deserves?
The Potential: AI Can Help Us Process an Extraordinary Amount of Information
Healthcare generates an enormous amount of information.
Medical histories. Lab results. Imaging. Medications. Research studies. Genetic information. Wearable data. Symptoms. Treatment responses.
No healthcare professional can realistically absorb every piece of information available about every patient.
AI has the ability to process and organize enormous amounts of information very quickly.
That could potentially help clinicians identify patterns, surface information and consider possibilities they might otherwise overlook.
And for patients, AI can potentially make complicated medical information easier to understand.
That doesn’t mean AI should replace a doctor.
It means AI could become another tool that helps a doctor—and a patient—ask better questions.
AI Could Reduce Some of Healthcare’s Administrative Burden
One of the less glamorous but potentially significant applications of AI is reducing administrative work.
Healthcare professionals spend enormous amounts of time documenting, organizing information, responding to messages and completing other tasks that aren’t actually patient care.
If AI can safely reduce some of that burden, it could give healthcare professionals more time to do what humans do best:
Listen.
Observe.
Ask questions.
Build relationships.
Use judgment.
And care for another human being.
That’s a pretty compelling potential benefit.
But Here’s the Problem: AI Can Be Wrong
This is where I think we need to be very careful.
AI can sound incredibly confident while being wrong.
That’s particularly concerning in healthcare.
A patient may ask an AI system about a symptom and receive an answer that sounds logical and medically sophisticated. But an AI doesn’t examine the patient. It doesn’t necessarily know the complete medical history. It can’t feel the abdomen, listen to the lungs or observe subtle changes in someone’s appearance.
And even when AI has access to medical information, the quality of its answer depends on the information it’s given and the system being used.
So there’s a danger in confusing information processing with clinical judgment.
They aren’t the same thing.
Privacy Is Another Major Concern
There is also the issue of health information.
Our medical information is among the most personal information we have.
Before putting medical records, laboratory results, photographs or other sensitive information into an AI system, we should understand:
- What happens to the information?
- Who can access it?
- Is it stored?
- How is it protected?
- Is the system designed for handling protected health information?
- What safeguards are in place?
Convenience shouldn’t automatically override privacy.
The Danger of Automation Bias
This was one of the concepts that stood out to me when talking with Gleb.
When technology gives us an answer, there can be a tendency to assume the technology must know something we don’t.
That’s called automation bias—the tendency to favor information or recommendations generated by an automated system, sometimes even when our own judgment or other evidence suggests we should question it.
Think about how easy it is to follow GPS.
Most of us have probably driven down a road and thought, This can’t possibly be right.
And yet we keep going because the little blue line told us to.
That’s relatively harmless when we’re being directed through a neighborhood.
Healthcare is different.
If an AI system makes a recommendation about a medication, diagnosis or treatment, we need to be able to ask:
- Why?
- What information did it use?
- What might it have missed?
- What are the alternatives?
And most importantly:
Does this make sense in the context of this particular patient?
And Yet…AI May Sometimes See Something We Miss
This is where Gleb’s story really made me stop and think.
During our interview, he shared how AI helped identify something significant about his health—something that ultimately led him to seek appropriate medical attention.
For him, AI wasn’t replacing a physician.
It was another source of information that helped him recognize that something might be wrong.
That distinction is important.
The lesson I took from his experience wasn’t “AI can diagnose you.”
It was closer to:
Sometimes another perspective can help us notice something we might otherwise overlook.
And that is potentially one of the most interesting applications of AI in healthcare.
Not replacing human expertise.
Augmenting it.
AI Doesn’t Have to Be the Doctor
I think we’re sometimes having the wrong argument.
The question doesn’t have to be:
“Should we trust AI or doctors?”
Perhaps the better question is:
“How can we use AI to help doctors and patients make better-informed decisions?”
So Where Does That Leave Us?
I’m neither an AI evangelist nor an AI alarmist.
I’m curious.
And that’s one of the reasons I enjoyed my conversation with Gleb.
AI is moving quickly, and I don’t think we should blindly embrace everything it can do—or reject it simply because it feels unfamiliar.
Gleb’s story about AI potentially saving his life demonstrates the incredible promise of this technology.
But that story doesn’t mean we should turn our healthcare over to AI.
To me, it illustrates something more nuanced.
Sometimes technology can give us another set of eyes.
Sometimes it can help us process information we couldn’t reasonably process ourselves.
Sometimes it can point us toward a question we need to ask.
But the goal shouldn’t be to replace human judgment.
The goal should be to make human judgment better.
And as AI becomes increasingly integrated into healthcare, I think that distinction is going to become more important—not less.
Watch the Conversation with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky
My conversation with Gleb on Energize & Revitalize goes deeper into the psychology of AI, how we interact with artificial intelligence, the risks of outsourcing our thinking—and his remarkable personal experience with AI and his health.
Because the future of healthcare may not be human versus AI.
It may be learning how to use both wisely.