Commentary
This article offers perspective as telehealth and virtual care become more prevalent in veterinary medicine and AI tools are being further developed. We noted the doctor’s considerable experiences with virtual medicine, the (missing) need for setting patient expectations, plus challenges when there is no doctor-patient relationship.
All too often, I’ve cared for patients who treat their telehealth appointment like an UberEats delivery, expecting specific treatment for immediate, transactional results. And it’s only getting worse . . .” – Joshua Tamayo-Sarver, MD, PhD, FACEP, FAMIA
As a part-time advisor to health tech startups, Dr. Joshua Tamayo-Sarver is increasingly concerned that tech startups are confusing the capabilities of large language models as they relate to the practice of medicine . . . especially telehealth.
Source: Fast Company, September 21, 2023. Link.
INSIGHTS: Tamayo-Sarver shares concerns that the transactional nature of telehealth is already eroding physicians’ fealty to the Hippocratic Oath and its promise to treat the whole patient, not just the specific ailment. Concurrently, he sees the possibility of leveraging an LLM-powered chatbot that interacts with patients before their appointment begins.