Doctors Want More Say In Designing Digital Tools

Physicians are eager to get their hands on digital tools and other innovations aimed at improving patient care but they need a more prominent voice in the early stages of development and implementation, according to Jesse Ehrenfeld, MD, President of the American Medical Association

“We all want innovation. We want digital tools, processes, systems that work better for patients and better for doctors,” Ehrenfeld said during an interview at the 2023 Oliver Wyman Health Innovation Summit. “And unfortunately, there’s been a lot of technologies that have been more of a burden than an asset. … we need the voice of the clinician at the outset.”

Ehrenfeld pointed to generative AI as a tool that holds promise for clinicians and patients but cautioned that there are still a lot of unanswered questions around its use cases.

“There’s this problem called hallucinations. It’s when something is created it sounds really good, it’s very convincing, but it’s false. It’s inaccurate. It’s wrong,” he said, adding that the industry needs tools like generative AI to scale capacity but it must be thoughtfully deployed in clinical settings.