AI is Becoming a New Site of Care
The first iteration of digital health was basically a skeuomorphic recreation of a traditional doctor's visit on a computer screen. Now, we’re seeing AI-native companies take full advantage of the native capabilities of AI to create something different and indispensable: the supply-abundant, engagement-centric, always-on healthcare system of the future.
These companies are:
Tearing down the artificial siloes between medical specialties that currently force patients to become their own care coordinators.
Exponentially scaling clinical judgment through their AI-native care models, enabling effective panel sizes of 10,000+ patients per doctor.
Implementing multiple business models: adopting everything from tapping into labor budgets, utilizing value-based care, and embracing consumer cash-pay as we’re seeing more broadly with generalist consumer AI products.
Available on-demand, 24/7, and fully integrated with human care teams.
Some examples of AI-native models include:
Ubiquitous clinical concierges - every patient will be able to have their own on-demand, clinical concierge, whom they can consult at any time between doctors’ visits: an ally with perfect memory, guidelines-based training, and context-based personalization. The AI concierge can also collaborate with human clinical teams by escalating and assigning tasks.
Autonomous, dynamic therapy - clinically-trained chatbots will deliver guidelines-based care that’s therapeutically honest rather than reflexively validating. Trained on multiple evidence-based methodologies, they can evolve with each patient’s journey, instead of forcing disruptive therapist changes as often happens in traditional settings.
Doctor-in-your-pocket “superapps” - AI-native platforms will deliver the best of both worlds: familiar AI chat and voice interfaces, combined with on-demand human doctors who provide clinical-grade diagnoses, prescriptions, and referrals. Purpose-built medical AI infrastructure can unify primary and specialty care functions in a single platform.
These AI-native sites of care are exponentially scaling clinical judgment and expertise - effective patient panels are already expanding from hundreds to tens of thousands per clinician. They're also generating entirely new data sets that are far higher resolution than traditional EHR data - unlocking enhanced personalization, predictive analytics, sophisticated risk modeling, and even better training of future foundation models.
New care models typically demand innovative payment approaches - and we’re already seeing these new AI companies tapping into labor budgets, utilizing value-based care, and embracing consumer cash-pay as we’re seeing more broadly with generalist consumer AI products.
And the scalability and low-cost structure of AI-native sites of care means that we can afford to extend them to even the most vulnerable and underserved populations.