Artificial Intelligence in Health: Enhancing a Return to Patient-Centered Communication

The medical environment is on the verge of a dramatic transformation as artificial intelligence (AI) evolves. With the inevitable shift toward AI in health care delivery, there are concerns around its implementation, including ethics, privacy, data representation, and the potential for eliminating physicians. However, AI cannot replicate a physician's knowledge and understanding of the patient as a person and the conditions in which he or she lives. Therefore, provider-patient communication will be paramount in providing safe and effective health care. This piece describes the importance of patient-centered communication and the unintentional move away from this in recent times. We argue that patient-provider communication is vital in the age of AI as it will integrate into the way medicine is practiced, thus leading to more time with the patient to build rapport, trust, and empathy. This will ultimately lead to optimal health-related outcomes.