This column is part of a series of firsthand physician accounts that detail how AMA Health System Member Programs are moving medicine to support patient health and the medical profession.
The soul of medicine lives in the moments when patients feel known, physicians and other health professionals feel present, and healing is rooted in trust. My years of practice have taught me healing depends on more than clinical expertise; it requires strong patient-clinician relationships, and a system built to support it.
Those strong relationships are increasingly challenging to sustain as American healthcare is at an inflection point. Rapidly shifting federal policies, rising affordability challenges and physician and clinician shortages show up in delayed appointments, rushed visits and patients who feel unseen by the system meant to serve them.
To address these pressures, healthcare must move beyond fragmented, volume-driven models and accelerate the shift to value-based care. That is an operational and a moral imperative. When care is unaffordable, disconnected or delayed, patients lose more than access; they lose trust, continuity and the sense of being known.
Built on prevention, integrated care coordination and high-quality outcomes, value-based care offers a more sustainable path forward—and a new generation of technology is serving as the engine for widespread adoption.
AI with a human purpose
Value-based care sets the direction. Artificial intelligence (AI) can provide the capacity to help us get there. While some fear technology will make healthcare less human, I truly believe that these tools can strengthen medicine’s soul by giving clinicians more time and insight to care for patients with greater presence—and to do so at scale.
By augmenting clinical intelligence and extending physician and care team reach, AI can make healthcare more efficient, timely and precise. Already, these tools are helping improve diagnostic accuracy, reduce administrative burden, surface relevant patient insights and direct resources where they can have the greatest impact. With proper oversight, new technologies can support a more integrated, accessible system—and help strengthen patient care and the practice of medicine itself.
I think about AI’s potential in medicine through three human dimensions: the mind, the heart, and the healing touch.
The mind: Predicting what patients need next
The next era of healthcare innovation will help clinicians turn information into earlier, more precise action. By detecting patterns across vast data sets, predictive analytics can surface risks earlier and support timelier decisions.
Already, AI tools can prioritize urgent patient messages and analyze mammograms to identify higher-risk concerns before cancer cells develop. Next-generation portals could evolve into proactive patient operating systems, combining clinical, genomic, social and biometric data into “digital twins” or personalized portraits of each patient. These models could help predict risks for conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease or chronic kidney disease years before symptoms appear, enabling earlier, more targeted care.
In a value-based model, earlier predictive insight can help prevent avoidable complications, unnecessary utilization and higher-cost care. The goal is not more data, but insight that helps clinicians intervene sooner, build trust and move care from reactive treatment to proactive, personalized support.
The heart: Restoring emotional capacity and compassion
AI may also help restore clinicians’ emotional bandwidth. By reducing administrative work, tools such as ambient AI listening can help physicians listen more fully, enter visits better informed and stay focused on patients rather than documentation. Emerging ambient AI listening portal capabilities can flag relevant health conditions, track whether key issues are addressed and prompt physicians when an appropriate assessment and plan are missing.
Also, AI agents can compile a patient’s history—labs, specialist notes and smart watch data—into concise pre-visit summaries, helping physicians begin each conversation informed and attuned. Those AI-generated notes can also summarize a patient’s history and surface meaningful personal information or social needs, from a birthday or graduation to food insecurity or chronic fatigue.
In a value-based care system, that support can help clinicians respond earlier, strengthen empathy and adherence and reduce burnout. AI coaching tools could also support communication training for medical students by flagging tone, pace or body language that might make a patient feel rushed or unheard. Help with navigating challenging conversations—whether addressing vaccine hesitancy or explaining the need for specific antibiotics—can help clinicians develop lasting connections with patients.
The human touch: AI as a physical extension
The final pillar is touch, the hands-on, relational presence that helps patients feel cared for, valued and supported. Technology can strengthen this truly profound human connection when it gives physicians a clearer picture of a patient’s everyday life between visits and creates more meaningful moments for connection.
Smart wearables, ambient sensing and invisible home monitoring could detect meaningful changes in blood pressure, gait, breathing and cardiac rhythms without requiring a wearable device. With better signals, physicians can respond to clinically significant, data-driven red flags rather than arbitrary check-ins, enabling them to intervene before small concerns become crises.
Timely intervention is central to value-based care because it can prevent deterioration, reduce unnecessary hospitalizations and keep patients connected to the right level of support. AI can also turn complex medical data into interactive visual tools that deepen patient engagement.
Imagine a future where an orthopaedic specialist could project a realized 3D model of a patient's joint anatomy, bone density or fracture alignment to show exactly where an implant will sit. Used in this way, technology can deepen understanding while preserving the human touch at the center of care.
Keeping the soul of medicine human
AI’s promise is not to automate more care or replace the people devoted to providing it. It is to help physicians practice at the highest level by seeing patterns sooner, listening more fully and staying engaged with patients beyond the exam room. These tools can restore something medicine urgently needs: The time that it takes to develop deep, trust-filled relationships that strengthen the soul of medicine.
These bonds between patient and physician are at the heart of value-based care: A model built not around transactions but around prevention, affordability, continuity and long-term planning that delivers better outcomes. The most meaningful advances in healthcare will not simply make the system more efficient. They will make it feel more deeply human.
From AI implementation to digital health adoption and EHR usability, the AMA is fighting to make technology work for physicians, ensuring that it is an asset to doctors and the patients they care for. That includes the AMA Center for Digital Health and AI, which works to ensure physicians help shape how AI is developed, implemented and regulated across the healthcare system, with patient safety and physician-led care remaining at the center of those efforts.
Ramin Davidoff, MD, is executive medical director and board chair of the Southern California Permanente Medical Group, and board chair and CEO of The Southeast Permanente Medical Group. He is also board chair and CEO of The Hawaii Permanente Medical Group and co-CEO of The Permanente Federation.
