Knowledge Technicians are Dead. Be a wisdom worker instead.

The knowledge economy has evolved and it is impacting medicine. Doctors and educators are selected and trained to be knowledge technicians-those who are trained to solve problems and provide information- while the market is demanding that they evolve into leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs and leaderpreneurs, leading those charged with creating user defined value. In addition, recent advances in deep intelligence are making man and machine indistinguishable in cognitive abilities. Teachers/doctors have evolved into trusted coaches and advisors. The have gone from technical to transformative.

If you just want information, you can find it online. If you want to do something with the information, you will need much more.

Deloitte advised that we are in an intelligent based future where physicians aren’t gatekeepers or prescription-writers as they are today. Instead, we expect they will be educators, data researchers, informatics specialists, digital consultants, and proceduralists. They might also be complex-care managers who focus on complicated illnesses or injuries. Some of them might become business-to-business consultants who advise physicians who work directly with patients, particularly around difficult cases. Physicians who perform procedures will still be needed in the future, but we expect we will need fewer of them as supporting robotics, and emerging genetic and molecular treatments reduce the need for invasive surgeries.  

Enter generational AI and BioGPT and all the sturm und drang (storm and stress in case you flunked German) predicting the demise of any doctor who gets paid to just think and not do anything else to make their salary.

Artificial intelligence. Data science. Automation. These are the new buzzwords on the lips of all forward-thinking executives and businesspeople. Just as video conferencing and cloud storage transformed our perspective on commutes and meetings, artificial intelligence is challenging our current view of work. As an article by McKinsey Research Institute noted, “[w]orkers will need to acquire new skills and adapt to the increasingly capable machines alongside them in the workplace.”

Doctors are wisdom workers practicing the art of judgement.

How should we get from here to there?

1. Change how we select applicants to medical schools

2. Recruit, develop and promote for innovation

3. Teach the soft skills and require that students demonstrate competencies

4. Create some wiggle room between medical conformity and medical innovation

5. Reward faculty innovation

6. Stop punishing doctors for system errors over which they have little or no control.

7. Emphasize entrepreneurial thinking and the entrepreneurial mindset during training. 

8. Shift from problem solving to problem seeking. Seek first to understand, then be understood.

9. Use high tech to restore high touch. Data scientists need to add value and scale humans, not crunch data.

10. Mass customize care in an era of increasing commoditization

11. Provide doctors with the knowledge, skills and abilities they need to progress along the clinical value roadmap

12. Give doctors leaderpreneurship positions in health service organizations.

AI will humanize health care professionals to put more caring into healthcare.

The most undervalued physician skill is clinical judgement, i.e. knowing when to do or not to do something and adds more value than a level 5 evaluation and management code. Unfortunately, there is no CPT or E/M code for clinical judgement.

To thrive, doctors, and those who train them, need to evolve and adapt to changing market needs. Training more technicians is myopic and graduates won't be able to serve the needs of their communities.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack