Previously, I wrote an article about my vision that keeps me awake at night—creating a better, more human healthcare system where both patients and doctors feel valued and important.
I posted a note with a quote from it, and I received this comment:
Comments like this still sadden me for a moment, but I’m actually glad they generate traffic and help make my words more visible, and sometimes I love using them for educational purposes.
First of all, don’t promote something you don’t genuinely believe in. You can only advocate for something if you truly stand behind it; otherwise, it’s just performance, and people can sense that. They notice the gap and recognize the lack of authenticity, and when you preach about something you don’t believe in, you end up draining people’s enthusiasm and eroding their trust.
By filling the space with hopeless, negative energy, you make things harder for those who are genuinely fighting for the cause and actually doing the work. Please don’t add weight to an already far-from-smooth path.
Secondly, just because you don’t see it as realistic right now doesn’t mean it isn’t a valid option. Currently, it isn’t the reality — and that’s exactly why work is absolutely necessary.
As futures researchers, we understand that the trends and weak signals emerging within digital health, along with the wider cultural shifts happening now, offer exactly the kinds of possibilities that make this a feasible future option. It won’t happen overnight — that’s a fact. But it can happen, and it must be actively shaped. Riding the current waves may seem naive optimism to many, but it’s our responsibility to make things easier for those who come after us, so they can live and work within a more humane healthcare system.
Physicians who have been practicing for many years are understandably harder to shift — change is more demanding when routines and identities are already deeply formed. Still, they deserve opportunities to learn and adapt, and this is what I offer HERE.
Real, lasting change, however, begins when transformation starts at the level of medical education. When training programs informed by our research become part of the curriculum, newly trained physicians will enter the system with a different baseline. What currently feels “new” or “challenging” will simply be their norm.
The fact that the future of medicine involves medical AI is not a question — it is inevitable. What is still open, however, is how physicians and patients will feel in this future, and how we will handle the fears, tensions, new roles and responsibilities, and all the challenges that inevitably emerge. That part is on us.
This is why I say: the future of medicine is AI — but the future of the quality of medicine is psychology, clinical health psychology more precisely.
Historically, the closest analogy I can think of is the atomic bomb. Those who developed it did not intend to create a destructive force for the world; they believed they were working toward ultimate peace. Yet, we all know what happened afterward. Technology itself is never neutral in its impact — responsibility depends on how it is integrated and used.
Our responsibility is to ensure that medical AI does not become a force that dehumanizes care, but one that truly fulfills its potential: relieving clinicians of unnecessary burdens, giving time and energy back to them — time that can be reinvested in patients, in presence, in empathy, in listening, in easing suffering, and most importantly, in compassionate healing.
For this to happen, clinicians must confidently and competently adopt new technologies; they need a basic understanding of how machine learning works and a clear grasp of their rights, limitations, risks, and possibilities — and they must learn to collaborate with informed, empowered patients.
Finally, though by no means least, sometimes there are comments way worse than this one. This really makes me feel the writer’s sadness and hopelessness, but there are others out there who are just simply… rude.
Those mean ones often come from people who are not actively working toward any larger good. They do their nine-to-five, go home, open a beer, watch a series, go to sleep—and repeat the cycle the next day. Occasionally, during an evening doomscroll, a few “expert” comments are posted into the void. There is nothing inherently wrong with this kind of life, but it is fundamentally different from the reality of those who are actively trying to build, change, or take responsibility for something beyond themselves.
All I ask is this: if you’re not adding to the work, please don’t make it harder for those who are.
I want to make it clear that this description is not about the shown commenter as a person. I don’t know them, have no information about their life, and it would be unfair to judge based on a few sentences. Any of us can have a bad day; they might be going through something tough, grieving, or dealing with an experience we know nothing about. This post isn’t about them specifically or against them. The main point is about a broader pattern, and comments so tough I don’t even want to show on my website.)
This is where we are now. You can find the results of my research team’s work HERE. There is still a long way to go — but we are not giving up. This work runs through my days — and often into my nights.
If you would like to support this work, you can do so by becoming a paid member here on Substack, or by buying me a coffee HERE to fuel those restless nights. I need curious, strong, slightly crazy, deeply committed people. I need my people who “can hear the music” — because yes, there are moments when I get tired, when I burn out, when aligning this research timeline with patient care, course development, writing, studying, and managing my own personal life’s ups and downs feels almost impossible.
And in those moments when I feel like I can’t go on, I think of one of you — your support, your energy — and I keep moving forward by borrowing it from you. You — the curious, the stubborn, the relentless, the “delusional” ones — are the people with whom we change what is said to be unchangeable.
Thank you for being part of this journey.
Don’t forget:
Humane healthcare and more patient-centric care, physicians without burnout should never be called a dream — dreaming is not enough here. We do not require hopes and wishes; rather, we necessitate decisions, defined timelines, unwavering commitment, dedication, and a willingness to proactively construct a future worth striving for. We must turn every disappointment and every bad experience in today’s healthcare system into fuel for that fight.
To those who can hear the music: keep going.
Relentless people often sound delusional at the beginning, because no one else can yet see what they’re willing to work for.
Nora is the first PhD candidate in the world in Medical Foresight. A clinical health psychologist, expert in science communication and lifestyle medicine. As a researcher, she aims to open the way for a happier, more efficient healthcare system by addressing healthcare professionals’ hesitations towards adopting medical AI. This is her first online course for medical professionals:
The doctor–patient relationship is changing faster than medical training can keep up. Patients arrive informed, full of questions, motivated by data, and increasingly influenced by digital health and medical AI — yet most doctors have never learned how to navigate this new dynamic without conflict or defensiveness. Foresight Studio New York’s brand-new online course, From Authority to Ally, offers a solid, psychologically informed skillset for this transition. It provides doctors with practical communication techniques, somatic regulation tools, and forward-looking frameworks that maintain clinical authority while fostering genuine partnership.
