June 12, 2025
Jerry Arbittier
Dan Wasserman dropped this fascinating tidbit on social media the other day—there’s a study where AI absolutely crushed two teams of human doctors at medical predictions. And it wasn’t even close. The robots won. But here’s where Dan made this brilliant observation: even when revolutionary technology clearly works better, it still takes forever to actually revolutionize anything.
This got me thinking about why not all breakthrough moments feel revolutionary in healthcare. It’s like finally proving that doing dishes immediately after dinner is more efficient than letting them pile up for three days, yet somehow we’re all still playing kitchen Jenga with our dirty plates.
Historical Perspective: Or, How Everything Takes Forever
Want to feel better about slow adoption? Lets deep dive into the history of handwashing. In 1847—that’s 1847, not 1947—a doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis proved that washing hands between patients dramatically reduced death rates. Sounds reasonable, right? Yet, it somehow took nearly 40 years for hand hygiene to become standard practice. Forty years! For washing hands!
CT scans took about 15 years to go mainstream after being invented. MRI technology followed an even more tortured path; the underlying magnetic resonance technology existed in the 1940s, but wasn’t applied to medical imaging until the 1970s. The first full-body MRI scan happened in 1977, but MRI machines didn’t become commercially available until the 1980s. It wasn’t until the 1990s that MRI became a standard diagnostic tool, meaning it took roughly 20 years to go from “working prototype” to “thing your doctor might actually use.”
And don’t even get me started on electronic health records. Prior to 2008, only 10% of hospitals had adopted EHRs. It literally took a $27 billion government bribe program (the HITECH Act of 2009) to get doctors to switch from paper charts to computers. Even with financial incentives, hospital EHR adoption rates only increased from 3.2% annually to 14.2% annually, and physician adoption of advanced EHR systems went from 17% to 40% between 2008 and 2012.
The Takeaway (Or, What This All Means for Your Next Doctor’s Visit)
That study Dan shared isn’t just about AI being better at medical predictions—it’s a preview of a future where technology amplifies human capabilities rather than replacing them.
The future of medicine isn’t going to be AI versus doctors—it’s going to be AI and doctors figuring out how to work together.
Picture this: You walk into your doctor’s office, and an AI persona greets you at check-in. It takes your vitals, asks detailed questions about your symptoms, reviews your medical history, and runs through a comprehensive diagnostic process. Then your actual doctor pops in for a 5- minute confirmation conversation—kind of like a medical quality control check.
Suddenly, instead of seeing 3-4 patients per hour (the current typical rate), your doctor could handle 6-12 patients in the same time frame. The AI does the heavy lifting of data collection and initial analysis, while the human doctor focuses on the parts that require judgment, empathy, and that final stamp of medical approval.
AI brings superhuman pattern recognition and diagnostic accuracy, while humans bring empathy, communication skills, and the ability to understand that sometimes what patients need most isn’t the perfect diagnosis—it’s someone who listens.
Change in healthcare moves at the speed of trust, not technology. And honestly, after spending years in this industry, I can attest that it’s probably a good thing. When it comes to our health, maybe it’s okay that revolutionary improvements come with thorough testing, careful consideration, and enough time to make sure we’re not trading our humanity for efficiency.
The medical AI revolution is coming, but it’s going to arrive like most real change does—gradually, thoughtfully, and in ways that preserve what we value most about human connection in healthcare. And if that takes a little longer than the tech enthusiasts would like? Well, some things are worth the wait.
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