Deskilling Healthcare: Will doctors and nurses remember how to care for patients?

I am most concerned about this issue in healthcare—perhaps obviously, because de-skilled clinicians could endanger human health. The other general reason why healthcare professionals might let AI de-skill themselves is that they are under considerable pressure to be more productive—at least in the U.S. The average patient visit with a physician is only about 15 minutes, and there are temptations galore to take AI-enabled shortcuts. If AI can easily summarize patient visits in clinical notes, diagnose diseases and communicate with patients about them, and help navigate highly bureaucratic insurance processes, why shouldn’t doctors and nurses take advantage of this capability?

Tom DavenportTom DavenportNovember 3, 2025ai, healthcare

From Automation to Autonomy: Preparing for Health Plan 2042

In every era of transformative progress, a tipping point emerges—an inflection where yesterday’s impossibilities become the infrastructure of today. In healthcare, we are nearing such a moment. For decades, the health insurance industry has been hindered by administrative complexity, rising costs, and structural inertia. Despite numerous attempts at policy reform, meaningful simplification has remained elusive. But a convergence of emerging technologies—artificial intelligence, decentralized systems, and real-time data networks—is poised to change that.

The Truth About AI In Healthcare

In heavily regulated industries such as healthcare, digital innovation can be slow to progress. However, once organizations push towards digital transformation and innovation, the benefits that can be achieved such as revenue growth, patient volume, and cost of care can provide tremendous value. Healthcare organizations are looking for an approach to cost-effective and technically efficient build-out to help on their digital transformation journeys. With investments shifting from core EMRs to infrastructure solutions that enable flexibility and adaptability, healthcare organizations are looking to digital innovation to solve these key issues. In an upcoming Enterprise Data &AI presentation on May 5, 2022, Vignesh Shetty, SVP & GM Edison AI And Platform, GE Healthcare Digital will discuss GE Healthcare’s digital health platform and how it’s helping companies in the healthcare sector on their AI and data journey.

Edge Computing and IoT in a Connected AI Healthcare Ecosystem

AI in healthcare now involves the use of machine learning algorithms and patient data fed in timely ways to these algorithms. IoT is making its way into hospital devices and equipment and is sending this data to computing facilities for AI to work its valuable guidance on it. This consistent data flow streamlines the patient experience by producing inferences from multiple data points, which help to guide and improve healthcare management capabilities with information and data while handling patients, equipment, and procedures.

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