One thing I like about blueberries is that they are easy to pick.
Why?
Because they are low-hanging fruit.
But when large healthcare institutions use combinations of AI and virtual visits to pick off the low hanging fruit of healthcare (such things as sore throats, bronchitis, urinary tract infections, pink eye, etc ) without face-to-face interaction with their primary care physician it comes with a cost—a “trust deficit”.
You see, trust between a patient and a physician is a very delicate thing, usually built up over months or years. Although one component of this trust will include successful prior treatments, which AI and virtual visits may be able to replicate, it also will include such things as empathy, tone of voice, kindness, concern, neutral touch, laughter, compassion—actual human connection.
Take away this human connection, which does require some amount of visit volume to establish, and you will not have the same level of trust. You will have a relative trust deficit.
And is having a trust deficit a big deal?
Well, it certainly will be when a patient’s health takes a dive and healthcare decisions suddenly become complicated. When choosing between different therapeutic interventions or selecting different specialists requires not just evidence-based medicine (the healthcare institutions catch-all phrase for every decision), but physician judgment.
Because it’s here, when physician judgment is crucial, that a trust deficit (or trust surplus) will play its most important role.
Anyway, I am not particularly opposed to AI-enabled virtual visits for various problems, but we are kidding ourselves to believe it doesn’t come with a significant cost.