3 keys to patient-physician trust in the age of AI

Often lost in discussions about AI’s unfolding impact on healthcare is its uncertain effect on patient-physician relationships. The authors of an opinion piece published July 15 in JAMA take up a key question underlying this lack:

How can patient-physician trust be maintained or even improved?

In introducing their material, Robert Wachter, MD, of UC-San Francisco, author of the 2017 bestseller The Digital Doctor, and colleagues note that healthcare AI applications loosely break into those used by physicians (clinical decision support, quality improvement), patients (self-diagnosis, condition management) and the data-management experts who develop the applications.

Each of these applications, they reason, has the potential to enable and/or disable...