The Future is Here

A few weeks ago, Doctronic AI received clearance in Utah to autonomously refill chronic medications. Shortly after, ChatGPT Health launched a consumer-facing health product. These are ground-shifting events. 

The news, which all happened days within each other, gave me great angst and finally got me to start playing with Claude Code.

I’d always wished for better analytics from Spruce. The platform works well enough, but I wanted to see my practice data in ways it wasn’t designed to show me. So one evening, over the course of a couple of hours, I built it. A functional dashboard which connects to Spruce via API and shows me the detailed analytics I have always wanted to see. I also wanted a faster way to have my lab prices at the ready for patient conversations, so I built that too as a web page module and chrome app. With AI coding, any technology you’ve ever wanted can be built, as long as you can describe it clearly. The barrier isn’t coding skill anymore, it’s clarity of thought. 

This is where our model shines. DPC allows physicians to innovate better and faster than any other primary care model. We don’t need committee approval. We don’t need to submit tickets to IT departments at hospital systems. When I identified a tech need in my practice, I filled it that same day. Try doing that in a health system. The physicians who thrive in the coming years will be the ones who see AI as a tool to extend their capabilities, not a threat to their existence.  

Physicians aren’t likely to be replaced by AI any time soon; however, those who AI could replace probably should be replaced. Medical practice that consists primarily of reflexive prescribing, pattern-matching without thought, and rushing through visits to hit volume targets will be replaced by AI which can do all of that more efficiently. But that was never good medicine to begin with. What AI can’t replace is judgment, relationship, and the ability to sit with a patient in uncertainty and help them navigate complex decisions about their own bodies and lives. The capacity to know when the textbook answer isn’t the right answer for the person sitting in front of you. 

The next three to five years will fundamentally change how medicine is practiced as the pace of AI advancement is accelerating, not slowing. Those who don’t understand AI aren’t necessarily going to be replaced by AI, they’re going to be replaced by physicians who do understand it. Physicians who use these tools to practice better, communicate more effectively, and build systems that serve their patients in ways that weren’t possible before.