The smarter the AI, the more important humans become
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Prof. Dr. Dominik Pförringer explains: Artificial intelligence takes over routine tasks and creates time for what is important: the relationship between doctor and patient. Why empathy is becoming the most important success factor in medicine in the age of AI.
Munich – The discussion about artificial intelligence in medicine is often incorrectly reduced to whether machines could one day replace doctors or nursing staff. However, the scientific evidence suggests a different development: AI will become one of the most powerful tools in medicine – but this is precisely why human empathy is becoming more valuable every day.
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AI will not replace doctors – it will support them
The future does not belong to the machine replacing people, but to people using the machine intelligently. Technology is the slave of people, never the other way around.
Empathy is not a decorative “soft skill”, but rather THE clinically relevant factor. A recent systematic review of randomized studies shows that empathetic behavior by practitioners significantly improves patient satisfaction. Patient satisfaction, in turn, results in greater adherence, higher treatment adherence and better treatment results.
Why empathy is medically effective
Medical empathy reduces anxiety and stress, improves doctor-patient communication and is associated with measurably better clinical outcomes. Empathy is the backbone of the doctor-patient relationship, the foundation of the art of healing.
Medicine is much more than the correct application of guidelines, much more than just data. People seek medical help in a situation characterized by uncertainty, pain, fear or existential threat. The patient not only wants to know What he has. He wants to understand what this means for his life. This meaning arises in a relationship – not in an algorithm.
Univ.-Prof. Dr. med. Dominik Pförringer
Univ.-Prof. Dr. med. Dominik Pförringer practices in his practice for orthopedics and trauma surgery on Theatinerstrasse in Munich. He specializes in artificial elbow joints, artificial hip joints, artificial knee joints and artificial shoulder joints.
What artificial empathy cannot achieve
This is a structural and logical limitation of AI. Modern language models can artificially generate empathetic speech. They can simulate comfort, recognize feelings and formulate supposedly “appropriate” answers. There is a fundamental difference, a truly complex difference, between simulating empathy and actually experiencing empathy.
Real empathy is based on a deep psychological awareness, a lot of experience, a mix of vulnerability, moral responsibility and human interaction. None of this can even come close to being captured by data, let alone addressed.
The doctor understands the patient primarily based on data. He understands him because they are both human. You can’t treat an x-ray, it’s about the person. This form of relationship is biographically, socially and morally embedded. It cannot be calculated, cannot be measured, but is purely human.
How AI gives doctors more time for their patients
This is precisely why the goal cannot be to replace human empathy with AI, but rather to use AI to relieve doctors of stupid tasks. The real revolution of artificial intelligence is to liberate doctors: documentation, coding, information searches, summaries of findings, appointment organization or data analysis can already be successfully automated and simplified today.
This creates something that has become increasingly scarce in the healthcare system over the years: time. Time for medicine. Time for our patients. This makes the most empathetic medicine possible. When machines fill out forms, people can help people again.
The crucial question is whether people consciously develop the technology. AI has to be trained and the doctor has to take the time to do it. Medicine is always successful when technology serves the doctor and therefore the patient and never the other way around.
The stethoscope does not replace the doctor, it empowers him. Of course, the MRI does not replace the radiologist, it helps him. No artificial intelligence will replace humans. It is a tool – with the potential to be the most powerful tool in (medical) history.
But tools have no purpose of their own. People define the purpose; they control what tools are used for what and when. That’s why the future is not a medicine of machines, but a medicine in which empathetic doctors use powerful AI systems to make better decisions and gain more time for their patients. Technology becomes humanity’s servant – not its successor.
The medicine of the future will remain human
Or to put it another way: the medicine of the future will be no less humane. It will be more humane because intelligent machines free people from tasks that do not require humanity. Empathy does not remain the problem of medicine that needs to be solved. It remains their most valuable asset. And that’s exactly why it will never be automated.