The Most Underutilized Technology in Healthcare
It's simpler than you think.
I’ve spent most of my career working in digital health, so I often get asked: “What do you think is the most exciting technology in healthcare?”
People offer up ideas from the latest startups: wearables, genetic testing, AI diagnostics, whatever they’ve recently heard about.
My answer has always been the same: the group chat.
Communication is the fundamental crux of delivering excellent care. In a world where information is abundant, diagnoses are increasingly complex, and we’re experiencing maybe the most fragmented healthcare system we’ve ever had, it has never been more important.
The bones of healthcare communication are the pipes that connect us. But these pipes don’t need to be anything special. We can use the same ones we use for everyday communication: email threads, text messages, Zoom calls. The obstacle to overcome here is one of execution and coordination, not technology.
In the inpatient hospital setting, group meetings are quite common around acute care decision making. For example, when a patient is admitted towards the end-of-life, we will gather multiple specialists and family members to have complex discussions about what treatment options make sense going forward. With the tools of 2025, there’s no excuse for not creating the same dynamics outside the hospital. Many patients have had the painful experience of playing telephone between providers, repeating one doctor’s words to another, carrying the anxiety of getting something wrong or leaving something out.
I think about three different types of group chats:
The Case Conference - Including multiple clinical voices from different specialties to discuss a patient case and work towards a common understanding.
The Family Meeting - Including family members, close friends, or other relevant individuals with the patient to streamline communication, especially regarding complex decisions or decisions where the patient has limited capacity.
The AI Triad - Including an AI-based large-language model (like ChatGPT or Claude) in the conversation between patient and clinician.
A side note on #3: Many of my patients have dialogues with AI models about their symptoms. I love when I’m added to these conversations. It catches me up quickly on how the patient is doing, reduces the need for them to repeat their story (a common pain point), and gives me an educational moment to discuss what was correct versus incorrect about the model’s assumptions. It’s no different than the classic model in academic medicine where a med student or resident first speaks to a patient and then presents their case. When handled with comfort, it’s an awesome opportunity to engage the patient in their experience of their health.
There is nothing inherently negative or strange about this. This is extremely human, and despite the common doctor reflex of shaming “Dr. Google” (primarily a defensive reflex that serves to maintain their power in the dynamic as the ‘source of truth’), people will always and should always be curious enough to explore their health. With some of my patients where health-related anxieties are at the forefront, we might have a conversation about reducing this behavior. But mostly, it’s additive.
A Case in Complex Decision-Making
One of my patients was an elderly woman who was homebound and suffering from Lewy Body Dementia. She had become quite paranoid (common in Lewy Body as hallucinations and delusions progress) which understandably made every home health aide into an intruder. Her family was very caring but didn’t live nearby.
We spent months talking with different family members individually - her daughter who was the primary decision-maker, her son who handled the finances, her grandchildren who visited when they could. Everyone had pieces of the puzzle. My community health worker was on the ground seeing what was actually happening day-to-day. The neurologist understood the trajectory of her disease and was managing her medications. I was trying to coordinate everything, but the picture kept fragmenting.
The breakthrough came with one big Zoom family meeting. We gathered everyone. For the first time, the neurologist could explain directly to the whole family what to expect as the disease progressed. The community health worker described what was actually happening in the home. The family members could discuss the trade-offs of each decision with live feedback from the clinical team. Different generations, different roles in the family, different professional perspectives - all in one conversation. What had been months of telephone tag and misaligned information became 60 minutes where we could actually think together about how to help this woman stay in her home safely.
The Path Forward
Patients shouldn’t have to be the connective tissue of their own care. When we coordinate well, we give them back their energy to focus on what matters - metabolizing information we share with them, making sense of their diagnoses, getting better, and ultimately living their lives. And yes, HIPAA is important, but it’s not the obstacle here. We have secure email, encrypted video calls, and platforms designed for exactly this purpose.
So next time you’re coordinating care for a patient, send the calendar invite. Add everyone to the secure email thread. Loop in the family. The technology is already there. We just have to decide to use it.