When was the last time your doctor looked you in the eye?
I ask because I’ve spent much of this year on the patient side of that question, and I know how it feels to talk to someone who is typing away. Barely listening. Hardly engaged.
Appointments are hard enough to get to begin with. Then, once you’re in the room, your time together is short, and the person across from you is often looking at a screen, hunting for records that should already be there.
I recently sat down with a friend of fifteen years to talk about exactly this. Dr. Pankaj Rajvanshi is a gastroenterologist and liver specialist who also works in obesity management. What I admire most about him is his curiosity, so I wasn’t surprised that he’s excited about AI in medicine. What surprised me was his reason. It’s not efficiency or insights. He’s excited because he wants his patient back, and he thinks AI can help with that.
What Happens in a 15-Minute Appointment
Pankaj walked me through what happens in a fifteen-minute visit. Before and during it, he’s pulling together a chart, checking which tests were run and when, considering insurance coverage and prior authorization, and watching the clock, because a visit that runs long probably won’t be paid in full by insurance. That’s why he’s busy looking at the computer and not always at you.
He hopes AI will be able to absorb that work: the data gathering, the synthesis, the insurance paperwork. In his words, the intelligence layer goes to the machine, and the judgment and connection layer comes back to the doctor. Imagine walking into a treatment room, and your doctor already has ten years of your medical history distilled into a paragraph with suggestions for things to discuss relevant to your particular health conditions. They will be free to spend the focus of the visit on you.
What Can I Do? What Should I Do?
This was the part of our conversation that stuck for me. Pankaj says a physician asks themselves two questions. The first is what can I do? AI can help with that, and increasingly it will have better suggestions than any of us. The second is what should I do?
That question depends more on the patient than the doctor. This is when they must consider not only who you are, the things you fear, the family support you have, and other factors that no amount of testing can lay bare. Pankaj described how the real questions in the patient’s room are rarely about actual results and more like: What’s going to happen to me?
That’s where wisdom and compassion come in, the two wings of mindfulness. AI can supply an enormous amount of information, but knowing what to do with it still takes the judgment and consideration of a person.
Hopeful, Not Naive
I don’t want to oversell Pankaj’s optimism. Instead, we talked about risks on both sides of the exam table.
For doctors, the danger is over-reliance on AI. If a young physician leans on the tool from day one, when do they built the judgment they need to ask the right questions and take the right actions?
For patients, no AI system gets everything right. The goal is for it to make you a smarter patient, but not replace seeking medical treatment altogether.
Next, there’s access. Will these tools bring better care to people who already have the best in the world, or will they finally reach people who’ve been left out of the healthcare equation? In our conversation a good answer to this inequality question didn’t surface. It’s important for healthcare leaders to choose carefully what is automated and what is protected.
Going Beyond Medicine
You don’t have to be a doctor to feel the weight of this shifting technology. Every field is deciding what to hand off to the machine and what to keep innately human. Dr. Pankaj Rajvanshi’s answer – let the tool help us decide what is possible and let the human decide what should be done.
I came away from the conversation feeling hopeful actually. Obviously the risks of implementation are high but there’s emotionally available people like my friend, Pankaj, who are wrestling with these big ideas. He still believes the best version of our future is one that brings doctors and patients closer together with improved technological resources.
Mindful Moment: What are some of the ways that you hope AI can improve healthcare outcomes? If you’ve seen something that fills you with optimism about how the tool can be used, please share it with the rest of us!
