Insights from Anjana Sharma, MD, MAS, on healtchare, AI, ethics, and thought pieces
View Dr. Sharma's original post on LinkedIn and join the conversation.
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A roundup of AI and healthcare pieces that have gotten me thinking. It can feel like a ping pong game where no one’s intentions seem clear nor transparent. (Full disclosure: I am a primary care physician who works for UCSF CODEX (Coordinating Center for Diagnostic Excellence) to disseminate high-quality information related to diagnostic safety and AI. I'm sharing my own thoughts, though this job has given me a crash course in the ping pong i'm talking about.)
You might read this article and be convinced that autonomous AI is ready to replace physicians! Its JAMA, after all!
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2852952
(Or, you might see that it was written by health tech owners who have a direct financial incentive to promote autonomous health AI, and wonder if that is not the strongest possible conflict of interest.)
You could read this Annals Article and be convinced that AI used by patients is wildly unsafe!
(Or, you could see that this was written by a subspecialist and unclear if they actually practice real-word primary care.)
We are witnessing a societal response to a captivating technology with limitless capital investment tied to it... attempting to glom on/into an economically and ethically broken healthcare system.
Ironically, its one of the last “human”-only capabilities, critical thinking, that will save us. Critical thinking reminds us that the ethical choice will not be the lucrative choice. The equitable choice will not be a financially attractive choice. Unfortunately, human well-being in healthcare relies on the firmest foundation of ethics and equity. And I’m not seeing the highest regard to ethics, nor equity, in most of the discourse around AI in health nor in medical safety.
In fact, the most thought-provoking piece I read this week wasn’t about medicine at all! It actually following the implementation and integration of AI in China, and the deeply depressing social isolation and negativity about the future that the author describes among regular everyday people interviewed. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/08/10/the-future-made-in-china
I'll close by citing the author's central thesis but adjusting it to AI and healthcare. Its not quick, its not snappy, its not financially lucrative. It's democratic and its intentional.
“The society best equipped to help its people will not be the one that simply races to insinuate AI into every aspect of medicine; more likely, it will be the one that shields decisions about deployment from distortions of capitalism and fee-for-service incentives….that makes patients feel they have a voice in their future healthcare.”