By Dr. Mark F. Sullivan

The digital revolution has radically transformed healthcare, bringing sophisticated tools like electronic health records (EHRs), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning into the hands of physicians. These innovations allow doctors to access information with unprecedented speed and accuracy, improving diagnoses, streamlining workflows, and enhancing treatment outcomes. However, as these technologies become increasingly woven into the fabric of clinical care, they also risk distancing physicians from the very human element of medicine—the personal connection between doctor and patient.

This “iPatient,” a term popularized by Dr. Abraham Verghese, represents the virtual version of the patient—charts, labs, scans, and templated notes that live inside the EHR. In modern clinical practice, it is often this version that receives most of the physician's attention. While these tools are meant to support care, they have introduced an overwhelming volume of digital tasks that compete with face-to-face interaction.
Instead of prioritizing personal interaction, many physicians find themselves tethered to screens, inputting data, and navigating complex systems that demand more and more attention. Auto-populated clinical notes, task inboxes, multiple email accounts, and prior authorization portals can contribute to an overwhelming flood of digital distractions. Patient portals have blurred the boundaries of care, creating a 24/7 stream of messages that physicians are expected to respond to, often outside clinic hours. Task inboxes flood with alerts and results while navigating fragmented billing and prior authorization software can take longer than the clinical decisions themselves. The human experience, the story of the patient, risks being buried under layers of bureaucracy.

The effect of this shift is profound. Non-verbal cues—important indicators of a patient’s emotional or physical state—are missed. The opportunity for meaningful dialogue is lost as physicians multitask between data entry and diagnosis. What was once a dialogue between two people can become an exchange between one person and a machine, a situation that increasingly threatens to depersonalize the healing process.

A prominent cardiologist recently described to me the future of medical decision-making as something akin to watching a football game through an ESPN app. In this vision, as machine learning and big data continue to evolve, clinical care will be guided much like an algorithm tracking a game’s progress. “You won’t need to think about the decision anymore,” the cardiologist explained. “Just like the app tells you a team’s chance of winning based on their position on the field and time on the clock, your clinical dashboard will tell you what treatment the patient should receive—no questions asked.”

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