In February, Waymo’s chief safety officer testified before the U.S. Senate that remote operators in the Philippines help guide its supposedly autonomous vehicles. The headline was about outsourcing. The real story was what it confirmed: Even after billions of dollars and years of development, human judgment could not be engineered out of the equation.
Waymo proved that human judgment doesn’t disappear just because the technology scales. Healthcare is still trying to prove otherwise. Across AI vendors and direct-to-consumer platforms, human touchpoints are being deprioritized. In healthcare, that tradeoff shows up in missed doses, abandoned therapies, and patients who quietly disengage.
Many healthcare AI solutions entering the market today weren’t designed for the complexity of human behavior. Emotions tied to a medication journey such as fear, confusion, and loneliness can’t be automated away, and when they’re ignored, adherence suffers.
The question for healthcare leaders, investors, and innovators isn’t whether AI will transform patient care. It will over time. The question is whether we are building toward something that actually works for patients.
AI in healthcare is scaling fast, but patient trust isn’t keeping up
AI-driven tools are being rapidly deployed to manage medication adherence, optimize pharmacy workflows, and personalize patient engagement. The opportunity is enormous. Medication nonadherence contributes to more than $500 billion in avoidable healthcare costs each year in the United States.
The appeal of automation is understandable. But the returns on digital-only interventions have been far more modest than the investment suggests. A systematic review of app-based interventions for chronic disease found that up to 98% of users stop engaging within a short period of time or drop usage to a point where the app is no longer effective at helping to manage disease.
The problem isn’t the technology. It’s the model of human behavior underneath it. Patients facing a new diagnosis or a complicated regimen aren’t making rational cost-benefit calculations. They’re managing complex emotions often clouding their judgment.
The numbers tell two different stories. AI currently represents 46% of all healthcare investment, nearing $18 billion in 2025. Yet the majority of patients say they would feel uncomfortable if their provider relied on AI for their care. We are building faster than patients are willing to follow. In healthcare, that gap has major consequences.
The barriers driving nonadherence aren’t always logistical. They’re human.
Adherence is often not as simple as eliminating functional barriers such as access and cost. Patients often stop therapy because of fear, social isolation, or a loss of confidence in the treatment. A 2025 systematic review found that patients lacking emotional and instrumental support were significantly more likely to stop therapy.
The research on this is consistent and has been building for years. Multiple studies have found that a lack of support and feelings of loneliness negatively impact medication adherence, and the effect compounds over time.
Trust is equally central. A global study found that only 51% of respondents trust their healthcare system to deliver optimal care, and evidence demonstrates a strong correlation between trust in healthcare providers and improved adherence. When that trust is absent, even patients who can afford their medication and understand how to take it are less likely to do so. Research has consistently found that without trust-based communication, patients cannot freely discuss their concerns about medication and that a lack of trust in providers can have a significant influence on adherence behavior. Patients are not failing the system. The system is failing to make them feel safe enough to be honest.
These are not problems that yield to better-timed notifications. They require conversation, context, and sustained human support and connection.
The right role for AI in patient engagement
None of this is an argument against AI. It is an argument for deploying AI honestly in roles where it genuinely excels and in service of human connection rather than as a replacement for it.
AI can identify which patients are most at risk of disengaging before they do. It can surface the emotional and behavioral patterns buried in thousands of patient interactions, giving care teams the intelligence to intervene earlier and more effectively. It can handle the operational work that frees human supporters to focus on what they can do. These are meaningful contributions. They are also contributions that require a human on the other end to act on them.
The healthcare organizations getting this right are not defined by how much they’ve automated. They are defined by how deliberately they’ve protected the human touchpoints that drive trust, engagement, and outcomes. Instead of replacing human touchpoints, these organizations are choosing technology that strengthens them.
What healthcare leaders should demand
The pitch will keep coming to automate at scale. The harder question belongs to the leaders on the receiving end of it.
What does this solution do when a patient is scared and doesn’t know how to say so? What happens when the technology reaches its limit; who steps in and how quickly? What does engagement look like at six months, not just at launch?
Waymo needed a human in the loop not because the technology failed, but because some decisions are too consequential to make without one. In healthcare, nearly every decision qualifies. The leaders who build with that understanding, rather than around it, are the ones patients will trust.
Photo: ismagilov, Getty Images
Michael Oleksiw is a corporate entrepreneur with a deep passion for technology, product development, and creating exceptional user experiences. Throughout his diverse career, he has hand-crafted bicycles, commercialized software for clinical trials, launched groundbreaking CME technologies for doctors, and introduced leading fashion technology products to the world’s top brands. He has also built offshore development centers, and, for over a decade, he continues his mission at Pleio to build frictionless, personalized solutions to address the emotional barriers patients face in their medication journeys.
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