Tech

Understanding Generation 2 patient engagement platforms

Physician

April 7, 2026

Patient engagement platforms are software systems that deliver clinical information to patients and manage patient questions and concerns outside of scheduled visits, including patient portals, mobile apps, and messaging systems. After nearly a decade of watching (and studying) the evolution of patient engagement platforms, I have come to see them as two distinct generations. I will refer to them as Generation 1 and Generation 2. Not because this distinction exists …

Artificial intelligence in surgery: Balancing precision with clinical wisdom

Anastasios Papadonikolakis, MD, PhD

Tech

April 5, 2026

In the operating room, precision has never been greater. Modern surgery now relies on navigation systems, artificial intelligence, robotic assistance, digital planning platforms, and predictive analytics capable of modeling outcomes before the first incision is made. For the first time in medical history, technology allows surgeons to simulate procedures, optimize implant positioning, and reduce technical variability to levels once unimaginable.

Yet many surgeons recognize an uncomfortable paradox emerging beneath this progress: …

The real problem with AI in medicine and drug development

Jarelis Cabrera

Tech

April 3, 2026

Artificial intelligence is rapidly acquiring a reputation as an unreliable, even dangerous, force in medicine and drug development. Hallucinations, opaque decision-making, and high-profile failures have fueled resistance to its adoption across health care systems. But this backlash reflects not an inherent flaw in AI itself, it reflects how we are choosing to use it.

The dominant mistake is conceptual. We are treating AI as a replacement for human reasoning rather than …

Using persuasive technologies in value-based health care

Olumuyiwa Bamgbade, MD

Tech

March 31, 2026

Health care initiatives will not succeed on policy language alone. They must work in patients’ daily lives. That means helping patients take medications correctly, monitor symptoms early, comply with treatment plans, recover safely after procedures, and stay engaged in long-term behavior change. Persuasive technologies are designed to help people adopt and keep using digital or other products. The best persuasive technologies for modern or value-based health care are not the …

How artificial intelligence sycophancy distorts clinical decision-making

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

Tech

March 29, 2026

Artificial intelligence talks with a voice that is fluent, confident, and increasingly human-like. For clinicians, that voice is both promising and worrisome. It can summarize charts, draft notes, and answer questions with remarkable speed. But it can also do something equally slick yet potentially dangerous: It can agree, virtually all the time.

At first glance, agreement seems harmless. Even helpful. But a growing body of evidence suggests that this tendency, known …

Scientific writing and AI: Balancing authorship and assistance

Rao M. Uppu, PhD

Tech

March 29, 2026

William A. Pryor, whose intellectual rigor and scientific voice shaped generations of researchers and the broader world of free radical biology and medicine, often told me something I have never forgotten. Only later did I understand that it was really about cognition.

But what stayed with me most was his insistence on a simpler discipline: Keep your hand on the keyboard and start writing. “The ideas,” he said, “will crystallize as …

Bayesian reasoning in health care: When to refuse medical tests

Martin Bello, PhD

Tech

March 28, 2026

I was diagnosed with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV). The diagnosis was not surprising. I had experienced several brief but intense episodes of vertigo, sudden, disorienting sensations that made it difficult to remain upright.

During one episode, I slumped against a bookcase. I did not lose consciousness, but the event was concerning enough that my physician suggested enhanced head and neck MRIs to rule out vascular causes. I have no fear …

How ChatGPT Health exposes the flaws in modern primary care

David Carmouche, MD

Tech

March 26, 2026

OpenAI’s announcement of ChatGPT Health landed with predictable shock across health care. A consumer platform with hundreds of millions of users can now securely ingest medical records, wearable data, and personal health history to deliver context-aware guidance in real time. For many health executives, the instinctive response was alarm, but that reaction misses the point.

This announcement was not a disruption; it was a revelation. When OpenAI reports that 230 million …

How wearable technology is changing the role of physicians

Jeffrey Junig, MD, PhD

Tech

March 25, 2026

At a recent CES show, a “longevity mirror” was introduced that can estimate your health from a brief facial scan and assign you a score. No clinician. No exam. Just a number. It is an impressive piece of technology. It is also a useful place to start, because it captures something that is quietly changing in medicine. Patients no longer need us to begin the process.

We are now surrounded by …

Navigating the cybersecurity challenges of artificial intelligence in medicine

Francisco M. Torres, MD & Purab Patel

Tech

March 19, 2026

Artificial intelligence, or “AI,” is fast becoming indispensable to modern medical practice. Whether they are using complex prognostic algorithms to model possible disease outcomes or they are upgrading medical bookkeeping applications, physicians employ various forms of AI to aid in daily tasks. And while these tools can produce unprecedented benefits, the increased incorporation of AI in medical practice also brings with it a number of key cybersecurity challenges. Medical information, …

AI in clinical documentation: the hidden risk of automation bias

Gagandeep Rai

Tech

March 18, 2026

The schedule is already behind. It is always already behind. In a family medicine clinic on an ordinary Tuesday, I open a chart and watch an AI tool do what it was built to do: draft the note, compress the story, produce an assessment that reads clean, confident, complete. For a moment it feels like relief, the kind you learn not to trust. Then the woman across from me says, …

Can AI scribes give clinicians time to teach again?

Lynn McComas, DNP, ANP-C

Tech

March 18, 2026

If the computer is getting more of our attention than the patient, we have a problem. It is not a small annoyance. It is not just part of the job. It is pulling clinicians away from patients, draining attention from the exam room, and quietly chipping away at the quality of clinical education. We can debate workflow, efficiency, and EHR optimization all day long. But here is what I see …

Health care cyberattacks expose a critical national security failure

Kristen Cline, BSN, RN

Tech

March 18, 2026

Everything we know about keeping people alive under pressure we learned from war. Triage was invented on a Napoleonic battlefield. Tourniquets, hemostatic dressings, damage control resuscitation, the golden hour itself. Military surgeons figured out how to stop bleeding and move casualties while the ground was still shaking, and civilian medicine inherited every lesson. The emergency department and the battlefield have always been adjacent theaters, running the same protocols under different …

AI agents in health care: What they say when we aren’t listening

Alp Köksal

Tech

March 17, 2026

When artificial intelligence systems talk to us, we tend to focus on what they can do for patients, clinicians, and the health care system. But what happens when they start talking to each other about us?

Earlier this year, a new platform called Moltbook, essentially Reddit for AI agents, launched with hundreds of thousands of autonomous “moltbots” posting (on any topic), debating, and upvoting without any human participation. The platform has …

The hidden risks and rewards of AI scribes in medicine

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

Tech

March 16, 2026

For decades physicians have dreamed of a simple technological solution to one of modern medicine’s most corrosive burdens: documentation. The electronic health record promised efficiency but delivered something quite different: extra burden. Physicians now spend hours each evening completing notes, clicking boxes, and reconciling fields, what has become known as “pajama time.” The keyboard has often replaced eye contact. The screen has displaced the patient. Ambient AI scribes arrived with …

The hidden risks of AI-generated progress notes in psychotherapy

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

Tech

March 12, 2026

Imagine a patient who spends most of a therapy session talking about a single memory. He describes sitting in his car after visiting his mother in a nursing home, unable to start the engine. He sits there for nearly 20 minutes, staring at the steering wheel and wondering when the roles had reversed, when he had become the parent and she the child. Nothing dramatic happens in the session. No …

How AI in dentistry is changing your next checkup

Sowjanya Gunukula, DDS

Tech

March 12, 2026

You probably weren’t thinking about AI the last time you sat in the dental chair. You were wondering whether that shadow on the X-ray meant a cavity, and whether it would hurt. But AI was quite possibly already at work behind the scenes, and it’s about to play a much bigger role in your next visit. As a general dentist, I’ve watched the conversation about AI in medicine grow louder …

Early-stage medical device innovation: How to discuss untested ideas

Jarelis Cabrera

Tech

March 1, 2026

Medical innovation is often framed as something that begins once a product is built, tested, funded, and approved. But anyone who has spent time in medicine or biomedical research knows that is the farthest thing from the truth. Innovation usually starts much earlier with a moment of frustration, a recurring inefficiency, or a quiet realization that something in patient care could work better.

What’s less clear is how we’re supposed to …

AI in health care data management: Curing the EHR overload

Hamad Husainy, DO

Tech

February 28, 2026

Once upon a time, clinicians didn’t have enough data about their patients.

To put it mildly, things have changed. Today we’re drowning in data. As a practicing emergency physician, it is a reality I see every day.

In an emergency department (ED) environment characterized by constant time pressure, staffing constraints, and high patient acuity, clinicians sometimes must wade through reams of electronic health records (EHR) data to find critical patient information that …

AI in clinical documentation: Who is liable for medical errors?

Harvey Castro, MD, MBA

Tech

February 27, 2026

The attending scrolls through the chart before morning rounds. The progress note is polished. The assessment is structured. The differential is surprisingly thorough. A predictive model flags the patient as high risk for deterioration within 24 hours. He did not write most of it.

An AI assistant drafted the note. A risk algorithm generated the alert. A decision-support tool suggested broadening the workup. He reviewed it. He agreed with most of …

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