Physician as Fact-Collector: A Model for the Physician-Patient Relationship in the Artificial Intelligence Era?

Suguna Pappu, MD, PhD, FAANS – Clinical Associate Professor, Neurological Surgery, Carle Illinois College of Medicine; Nir Ben-Moshe, PhD – Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Abstract: The nature of the physician-patient relationship remains a fundamental question for medical ethics. Evolving answers have both reflected and motivated broader developments in attitudes towards medicine, manifest in the abandonment of traditional medical paternalism for today’s multitude of competing models. Driven by medicine‘s ongoing reorientation around elaborate electronic health records, the insistence on evidence-based practice, and the rapid implementation of artificial intelligence-based clinical decision support systems, we propose that a new model of the relationship is emerging: the physician as fact-collector.

Medical AI promises improved diagnostic accuracy and efficiency by leveraging enormous datasets of quantifiable patient attributes. This capability potentially establishes an imperative for the medical profession to prioritize systematic data collection and sharing, including in ways that fundamentally reshape the clinical encounter. It is conceivable that such a model would eventually relegate physicians to technically proficient fact-collectors, while the traditional medical tasks of diagnosis and prognosis become the domain of AI.

Although data collection has always been essential to the practice of medicine, its elevation to the defining role of the physician threatens both patient care and the profession itself. Recasting the clinic into a locus of data exchange creates insidious incentives to orient medicine around those decisions amenable to AI prognostication, precluding the deliberation and rational autonomy that are constitutive components of ethical medical care. Furthermore, the prioritization of AI-generated propositional content will result in the fragmentation and loss of critical forms of expertise that have historically driven innovation, including clinical acumen, creativity, and professional virtue.

Keywords: physician-patient relationship, artificial intelligence, professional ethics