Ask any doctor why they went into medicine, and the answer won’t be “to master the Electronic Health Record.” Yet in today’s system, physicians spend more time with keyboards than with patients. As a patient, you’ve no doubt seen it up close. What you don’t see are the additional hours doctors log at night typing up clinical notes and staring at a screen.
The real question isn’t why this happens. We know the drivers: documentation, billing, compliance, liability. The right question is: what do doctors actually want instead?
They want time back. They want to spend time with their families in the evening, rather than with their computers. They want workflows that disappear into the background. They want to focus on their practice, not get buried in clicks. And above all, they want healthcare technology that restores the human connection rather than eroding it.
Why Screen Time Is the Wrong Metric
Too many digital health initiatives celebrate tactical wins – fewer clicks, shorter notes, faster prior authorizations. Those matter, but they miss the bigger picture. The metric that counts isn’t minutes saved on documentation; it’s minutes restored to the patient relationship.
When physicians have more time to listen, explain, and engage, patients trust more, outcomes improve, and clinicians feel the purpose that drew them into medicine in the first place.
Where AI Can Help — and Where It Can’t
The promise of AI is not more tools in the exam room, but fewer distractions. To get there, leaders must separate hype from reality:
- Ambient intelligence can capture clinical conversations in real time…but only if it reduces editing and earns physician trust.
- Automated prior authorizations can speed care delivery…but they require payers and providers to align incentives, not just automate paperwork.
- Predictive workflows can surface insights…but poorly designed alerts create fatigue instead of clarity.
The differentiator won’t be whether health systems adopt AI. It will be whether AI adoption feels like less technology in the room.
Moving Beyond Tools to System-Level Change
The next wave of progress won’t come from deploying another app or feature. It will come from rethinking how care teams work:
- Embedding clinicians in workflow design, not as end-users but as co-creators in the patient and provider experience.
- Balancing speed with governance, so accuracy and accountability are never compromised.
- Driving cultural adoption, because even the smartest tool fails if it doesn’t fit how people actually practice.
The organizations that win won’t just digitize medicine; they’ll humanize it with digital.
The Future of Invisible Technology
The competitive edge in healthcare will come from making technology invisible, embedding it so seamlessly that clinicians barely notice it’s there will. To do so will require more than a vague investment in AI. The organizations that win will be the ones who:
- Involve clinicians in workflow design from the start.
- Balance innovation with governance and trust.
- Invest just as much in cultural change and adoption as they do in technical integration.
When the screen fades into the background and the patient once again becomes the center of the exam room – that’s when technology has done its job.
Final Thought
Doctors spend more time on screens not because they want to, but because the system demands it. With smarter, human-centered AI, we can flip that script – reducing administrative drag and restoring the human connection that defines medicine.
At HLTH 2025 (October 21–23), we’ll be unveiling HealthSense AI, our accelerator designed to help healthcare organizations harness AI to restore the doctor-patient connection, organize and activate unstructured data, and responsibly accelerate the patient journey. Stay tuned – this is just the beginning.
