The Rise of Empathetic Technology in Medicine

What you’ll learn:

Close your eyes.

Imagine a world where technology evolves from solving our problems to actually “feeling” our emotions. Experiencing symptoms of a migraine? AI will sense your headache and immediately adjust the lights in your house. Having trouble waking up? AI might suggest a double shot of espresso without you having to ask.

Sound like science fiction? Well, buckle up because we’re entering a new age of AI “empathy engines” that will make being a patient suck a lot less.

While AI seems poised to transform our lives in almost every way, I am particularly fascinated with how it could alter our ability to treat the world’s patients. Beyond just an understanding of their medical history, AI would empathize with the patient’s experiences and could even have a better bedside manner than a human physician.

Continued exponential advances in AI and sensors enable empathetic healthcare and predictive recommendations in seconds. It will be like every person on Earth has universal access to the best care in the world, 24 hours a day, for a fraction of the cost of modern medicine. Tools such as Hume (hume.ai), which uses vision and hearing to interpret human expressions accurately, demonstrates a promising ability for AI to understand our emotional needs better.

While this new technology must overcome regulatory challenges and be widely adopted by doctors, I believe these new tools will enable many more patients to receive a higher standard of care than ever before.

We are on the cusp of highly affordable access to personalized and empathetic medical supervision by intelligence that far exceeds the treatment capacity of our best human healthcare professionals.

There are already many products that are integrating empathy engines into our lives:

Woebot (woebothealth.com) is an AI-powered chatbot that provides cognitive behavioral therapy and empathetic support for mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. Research backs up the effectiveness of this platform: a randomized controlled trial published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) reported that Woebot significantly reduced symptoms of depression in participants over the study period, as measured by the PHQ-9, a standard depression-assessment tool​.

Devices like Empatica’s EmbracePlus wearable device (empatica.com/embraceplus/) use sensors to monitor physiological signals like heart-rate variability, which can indicate emotional states. This technology is being used in research to help understand stress and anxiety while providing biofeedback to regulate emotions empathetically. An NIH study found that wearable sensors are shown to be feasible tools for the effective monitoring of mental health.

ElliQ by Intuition Robotics (intuitionrobotics.com) is an AI companion for older adults that promotes social interaction and engagement. By analyzing user interactions, ElliQ can understand the user’s preferences, mood, and needs, enabling it to initiate conversations, suggest activities, and help preserve memories. Research published in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society suggests ElliQ is a low-cost AI companion that can support older adults in the home and potentially reduce caregiver burden.

I am incredibly proud of my 13+ years at Klick Health. My work has allowed me to play a small but very fulfilling part in making the world better by improving patient outcomes. Klick’s ongoing commitment to better healthcare via empathy has been incredibly inspiring to my own personal journey. I often proudly reference breakthrough devices such as SymPulse™, which helps physicians experience the exact tremors of patients with Parkinson's disease.

The age of the AI empathy engine is upon us, and I could not be more excited to be a part of it! At Klick, we are proud to live at the forefront of healthcare innovation and improve patient outcomes with a healthy dose of AI-enabled empathy.