The healthcare sector is undergoing a profound technological revolution driven by the innovation and application of AI. From intelligent triage and image analysis to drug development, AI is deeply integrating into the entire diagnostic and treatment process, propelling changes in the medical field.
In Zhejiang, since the Wuzhen Intelligent Hospital opened last year, fewer than 10 doctors and a group of intelligent triage robots have received thousands of patients. In Shanghai, an AI medical large model developed by a team of doctors has successfully “passed” the national medical licensing examination. Particularly in the field of rare diseases, the application of the “Taichu” large model at Peking Union Medical College Hospital is expected to shorten the average diagnosis time in China from over 4 years to about 1 month.
The essence of medical services is care between people, and the core of medical services has always centered on “people” — doctors cure illnesses with experience, wisdom, and emotion, while patients entrust their lives with trust, support, and cooperation. Throughout the history of medical technology, the core of any medical technology is to solve the problem of “serving people” and possesses the attribute of “being created by people”. “Being created by people” is the means, and “serving people” is the fundamental purpose.
I grew up in a water town in the south of the Yangtze River. When I was a child, I often wondered why fishermen would put some large stones on their empty fishing boats when going out to sea. My parents told me that these were called “ballast stones”, mainly used to lower the center of gravity of the small boat when it was empty, to prevent it from capsizing in strong winds and waves. In the medical field, in the wave of AI-driven medical transformation, medical humanities is the “ballast stone” that ensures the steady navigation of the huge ship of medical technological transformation.
Medicine has never been a simple of technologies, but a warm dialogue of life. Currently, AI technology is profoundly reshaping the medical ecosystem and posing unprecedented challenges to the spirit of medical humanities, which need to be addressed with a sense of awe and solved with wisdom. Just as ballast stones can keep a small boat steady in storms, medical humanities is the “ballast stone” of the huge ship of healthcare in the AI era — it can keep technology from deviating from the course of saving lives.
While we marvel at technological miracles, we should also note that as the global AI healthcare market grows rapidly, surveys on doctor-patient trust show that the more advanced the technology, the stronger patients’ desire for “humanized medical care”. AI can only see data, but only doctors can understand the “person” behind the data — a person’s fears, family, and tolerance for pain. A study by Johns Hopkins University shows that when doctors increase communication time with patients by 30%, treatment compliance can increase by 50%. AI can generate ten thousand kinds of comforting words, but what patients may need is just holding the hand that wiped their tears.
We must be vigilant against “data dominance” replacing “humanistic dominance” and safeguard the emotional foundation of doctor-patient relationships. The essence of medicine is “the study of humans”. The eye contact between doctors and patients, the strength passed through the palms, and a sentence like “I understand your pain” — these seemingly small interactions are precisely the core codes of healing.
AI can replace humans in making knowledge-based judgments, but cannot replace humans in making emotional judgments. AI can accurately identify lesions, but cannot read the patient’s fear. If we allow technical logic to dominate the diagnosis and treatment process, the doctor-patient relationship will be alienated into a “dialogue between humans and machines”, and the most precious empathy, trust, and care in medical humanities will gradually be diluted. The key to solving this problem lies in how to actively manage and balance the use of technology.
We must prevent “algorithmic rationality” from overshadowing “ethical thinking” and build a solid value defense line for medical decision-making. The advantage of AI lies in mining patterns through big data, but medical decision-making has never been just “probability calculation”. When AI gives a conclusion that “the success rate of the surgery is 90%”, we must not ignore the patient’s mentality of “not wanting to bear even a 1% risk”.
Not long ago, there was such a case: the AI system recommended a certain targeted drug for a terminal patient, citing “optimal efficacy data”, but the doctor finally chose another plan — because he knew that the patient’s greatest wish was “to attend his daughter’s wedding”. This tells us that algorithms can provide the optimal solution, but the “most appropriate solution” always requires humanistic judgment.
We must avoid “technological dependence” weakening “humanistic inheritance” and protect the intergenerational transmission of the medical spirit. Medical humanities are not just theories in textbooks, but also “spiritual genes” passed down from generation to generation beside hospital beds and operating tables. When older doctors take students on ward rounds, they will teach them to “hold the patient’s hand before announcing bad news” and remind them to “ask about the patient’s financial situation before ordering examinations”. The warmth in these details cannot be programmed by AI. If technical tools lead to “ideological dependence”, the chain of inheritance of medical humanities may break. We must be vigilant: when the growth path of doctors changes from “learning from teachers and understanding people’s hearts” to “debugging algorithms and optimizing models”, what medicine loses will be not only warmth, but also its soul.
Xunzi said, “The gentleman is not different from others; he is good at using things.” AI is a gift from the times to medicine, not an answer to replace medicine. AI reads films more accurately so that doctors can have more time to listen to patients; algorithms make more accurate predictions so that treatment plans can better meet people’s needs; technology iterates faster to better protect the dignity of “being human”. The fundamental of “man-made” technology lies in “serving people”. The power to hold onto this profound foundation of medicine lies in the “ballast stone” of medical humanities.
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