Why does AI overlook other health professionals? Healthcare is a team endeavor. Nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech and language pathologists all contribute to the care needs of patients, which can be incorporated into AI tools to improve health. For the past 4000 years, healthcare has been inherently interdisciplinary. An ancient Sanskrit text (1) discussed the keys to health and mentioned a four-legged stool: doctors, patients, treatments, and nurses. More recently, the World Health Organization has said that training health providers in interprofessional education is critical. While healthcare is inherently interdisciplinary, recent history has focused research and innovation mostly on physicians and their contributions to health and wellness. Physicians are critical to patient health, but physicians are not the only health professionals who impact patient outcomes.
Andrew Boyd (2026) studied this question.