With a digital health record, clinicians and AI-driven diagnostic tools would be able to see your full health history - and then make better decisions
An AI model based on credible data could help doctors make better decisions for their patients.
I've been asking people lately how they would change healthcare in America if they had an all-powerful magic wand. What could that look like?
What I envision is a system for all Americans in which patients can choose the doctor they want with confidence, get a timely appointment, expect that medical professional and their support team to perform at a high level, and experience a hassle-free process from diagnosis to treatment to, hopefully, recovery.
Nowhere in my vision are hours or days spent waiting for a health insurer to determine whether such a treatment plan is covered - the dreaded exercise known as prior authorization. I am not Harry Potter, and I don't have a magic wand, but achieving this vision shouldn't require magic - just discipline and collaboration.
At the core of my vision is a "shared decision-making" approach that was introduced more than 30 years ago by John E. "Jack" Wennberg and his colleagues. In their groundbreaking research, they found that when patients understood their diagnosis and treatment options and had an opportunity to discuss those options with their doctor, they tended to choose more conservative, less costly treatments - and got better results and were more satisfied. This approach takes decision-making out of the bureaucracy and puts it where it belongs, with the patient and the physician. And if the right conditions are in place, patients will get the right care at the right time in a way that is efficient and cost-effective.
For shared decision-making to become the norm, we need three things: a comprehensive, real-time, digital health record easily accessed by both the patient and clinician; an objective AI model based on credible healthcare data that can assist in diagnosis and recommending treatment options; and the time for patients to have an in-depth conversation with their doctors, who are free from any financial conflicts, to decide on the best treatment option.
This isn't magic - it's AI
No matter how great your physicians are, they don't know everything. For example, a study published in 2004 calculated that doctors trained in epidemiology would need an impossible 29 hours per weekday to be fully up on all the latest research in primary care.
But this is 2026, and healthcare is at a technological inflection point. Clinicians and patients can use AI to collect and synthesize every bit of scientific data on the planet to help make a diagnosis or a treatment plan. Studies have shown that these tools hold great promise. Microsoft's $(MSFT)$ AI Diagnostic Orchestrator correctly diagnosed 85% of medical cases described in the New England Journal of Medicine, versus about 20% for human doctors.
With a digital health record, doctors and their AI-driven diagnostic tools could have full visibility into a patient's health history. Assisted by AI, they could access the latest research to support accurate diagnosis and identify options that inform an in-depth conversation as they decide on the best treatment.
Right now, we leave too much to chance.
Aidan Brown, 21, is a cancer survivor who was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma, a rare cancer of the nerve tissue, a few days before his fifth birthday. He and his mother, Michele Brown, described their grueling journey at an Oracle $(ORCL)$ event last year. Their inspiring, courageous story revealed deep flaws in our healthcare system.
Michele described carrying a binder with hundreds of pages of medical records and creating spreadsheets to track symptoms as they trekked from hospital to hospital, doctor to doctor, to get treatment for Aidan. To get a full picture of Aidan's health history, a clinician had to pore through paper records, relying on memory to weave disparate facts together. At one point, after a treatment failed, Michele learned of a life-saving clinical trial through a chance connection.
If Aidan's treatment took place today, AI could analyze a digital health record with images and lab results in minutes, drawing attention to key patterns and relevant facts. It could even help identify all potential treatments, including clinical trials.
This is fundamentally a good change
Digital health records, artificial-intelligence tools and shared decision-making are essential steps along the path to making this vision of personalized, affordable, high-quality care a reality - but they're not enough.
To put healthcare decisions back into the hands of patients and their doctors, we also need to rethink how we pay physicians, hospitals and other providers; how we distribute and price prescription drugs; and how we can prevent bad actors from abusing the system.
This may seem like a lot, but it is doable if we set our minds to it. While we spend a great deal of time in the U.S. talking about fixing what's wrong with healthcare, we often end up just tinkering around the edges rather than fundamentally changing things.
It's time to channel our inner Harry Potter, pull out our magic wands, think big and remove the obstacles in our way to create a healthcare system that's worthy of us.
Paul Markovich is president and CEO of Ascendiun, a nonprofit parent company of Blue Shield of California, Blue Shield Promise Health Plan, Altais and Stellarus. He took over as CEO of Blue Shield of California in 2013.
-Paul Markovitch
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 27, 2026 12:41 ET (16:41 GMT)
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