Replaceable doctors, online-only doctors, Dr. Thomas Keane & more healthcare AI news in brief

Lest we forget, medical misdiagnoses account for almost 800,000 deaths and other serious harms done to patients every year. Meanwhile healthcare AI is roundly celebrated for its diagnostic prowess. Can’t it help cut out a couple hundred thousand of those mistakes?

The answer depends on whom you ask, observes a philosopher and health informaticist whose research concentrates on the ethics of AI in healthcare. “[T]he machine is either a savior or a saboteur,” writes the investigator, Charlotte Blease, PhD, of Uppsala and Harvard Universities. “Most commonly, the vision is one of man and machine working side by side: the algorithm whispering in the doctor’s ear, the human hand guiding the treatment. A doctorly duet, not a duel.” But of course. AI won’t replace physicians, but physicians who use AI will replace physicians who don’t. Is Prof. Blease telling us we’ve been wrong about that somehow? She kind of is. To this reader, she seems to be suggesting that AI probably could replace some doctors after all—if only we’d all get out of its way. Some key points she makes in a hard-hitting essay published by Aeon Dec. 22: 

• Doctors are enmeshed in the very system under scrutiny. “Their status, salaries and sense of self are bound up in the debate,” writes Blease, author of the 2025 book Dr. Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us—and How AI Could Save Lives. “Of course they want to believe they’re irreplaceable. But history shows that those most invested in their own survival are rarely the best judges of their own irreplaceability.” 
   
• AI carries serious ethical and political risks—from deepening inequalities to new forms of harm, from lost jobs to environmental costs. “These concerns deserve scrutiny. But what will not help is straw-manning the technology, or deferring endlessly to the very profession whose survival is at stake,” Blease underscores. “Doctors cannot be the only ones asked to judge their own replaceability.”
   
• The really pressing question is not whether AI can replace doctors. “The evidence for or against that will emerge soon, as it should,” Blease points out. “What matters first is whether we are willing to release ourselves from the myths that keep medicine tethered to its own limitations. Only then can we begin to imagine and properly question whether new systems and processes could serve patients better than the ones we have now.”
   
• If planes fell from the sky with the regularity of deaths due to medical error, there would be outrage, inquiries and sweeping reform. “When doctors make mistakes, however, the narrative is gentler: They are only human. To some extent, this is an entirely justified response,” Blease states. “On the other hand, that is the problem. What is striking, though, is not only the scale of this tragedy but our indifference to it.”
   
• Patients are the visible victims of medicine’s hidden ailments, but doctors are its second casualties. “Behind the white coats, many physicians are exhausted, depressed and burning out,” Blease notes. “Around half of doctors in the United States report burnout. In the United Kingdom, 40% say they struggle to provide adequate care at least once a week, and a third feel unable to cope with their workload. Meanwhile, patient demand is surging.”
  
   
  • Hear her out in full. 

The shortage of primary care providers may lead to greater reliance on AI regardless of deep deliberations. 

A public radio station in Boston looks at the pros and cons of such a development unfolding in Massachusetts, where the dearth of PCPs is especially pronounced. Mass General Brigham’s Care Connect program employs 12 physicians who log in remotely from around the U.S. to help patients 24/7, we learn from WBUR. The always-available physician team is prepped for these virtual patient visits by AI bots that interview the patients and then propose possible diagnoses and treatment plans to an immediately available Care Connect provider. 

• Proponents of AI say these programs can help relieve burnout and worker shortages by reducing time spent on administrative tasks. Some research shows they may improve diagnoses. However, WBUR notes, “critics worry that AI agents can miss important details such as overlapping medical conditions, whether patients can afford or get to follow-up care, and family dynamics that personal physicians understand because they treat patients long-term.”
   
• Fueled by the uncertainty, some physicians are defiant toward the AI threat to their jobs. Take Madhuri Rao, MD, a primary care physician and union organizer at Mass General Brigham. She’s opting out of AI scribe technology. Dr. Rao worries patient information could be shared, WBUR reports, adding that she doesn’t want to help “educate her potential replacement.” In fact, she’s even more blunt than that. “What if they’re just using my interactions with patients to train their AI,” Rao says, “and boot me out of my job?” 
   
• Replacing doctors is not the goal. So assures Helen Ireland, MD, a primary care physician who manages MGB’s Care Connect program. “We are not replacing our in-person primary care,” says Ireland, adding that patients can use the program like urgent care or make a Connect Care doctor their PCP. Doctor-patient relationships are still important, she says, and most patients using the AI-equipped program still have in-person primary care.
   
  • Get the rest here.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services needs you.

That’s assuming you’re a stakeholder in healthcare or AI—or both, ideally—and you have an idea or two about how HHS can optimize its use of AI. “Artificial intelligence will be a transformative force for good across America,” says HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill in announcing the Request for Information. “We want to hear from you. Our efforts to accelerate AI adoption must be guided by the real needs and experiences of those developing these tools and delivering care.” Read the announcement here and the full RFI here. 

Also worthwhile:

• Matters Arising: The importance of understanding AI’s impact on physician behavior (Dec. 20 commentary on a study published last May) 
   
• What AI learned from cancer slides shocked researchers (Harvard Medical School via SciTechDaily) 
   
• Quantum vs AI in healthcare: How they differ and why leaders must prepare for convergence (World Economic Forum) 

From HealthExec’s news partners:

• Cardiology’s biggest trend: New scientific statements take on AI-powered coronary plaque evaluations (Cardiovascular Business)
   
• AI reduces readers' kidney lesion interpretation times by over 30% (Radiology Business)