The Doctor’s New Role in an AI World | Behind the Numbers

Marcus Johnson (0:00)

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Hey, gang, it's Monday, October 5th. Rajiv, Beth and the listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers, an EMARKETER Podcast made possible by Atmosphere TV. Marcus, join me for today's conversation. We have two of our health and pharma senior analysts living in New Jersey, Rajiv Leventhal.

Rajiv Leventhal (0:37)

Hey Marcus, how are you? Thanks for having me.

Marcus Johnson (0:39)

Hello, very good, mate. Good to see you. Thanks for being here. We're also joined in Pennsylvania by Beth Snyder Bulik.

Beth Snyder Bulik (0:46)

Hey, Marcus. Nice to see you.

Marcus Johnson (0:48)

Good to see you too. Today's fact.

Dr. James Naismith, who invented basketball, is the only Kansas men's basketball head coach with an overall losing record. That's tough. Although, it sounds like the England men's soccer team. We invented the bloody game. I can't win a major tournament. Well, I feel this pain.

Rajiv Leventhal (1:15)

What are you guys saying?

Beth Snyder Bulik (1:16)

Those who can do, those who can't invent?

Marcus Johnson (1:20)

Probably.

Rajiv Leventhal (1:21)

I wonder what the big obstacle was.

Beth Snyder Bulik (1:23)

Wow.

Marcus Johnson (1:23)

For England, how long do you have? For Naismith, no idea. Anyway, today's real topic. How people use AI for health.

All right, gang. Two years ago, we discussed on this show what AI should and shouldn't be allowed to do in health care. Rajiv, you've been looking into this recently. What's the main way, in your opinion, people are using AI in health care differently? What's changed since then?

Rajiv Leventhal (1:56)

Yeah. I think the main way is still the same as it was a year or two ago. People are using AI as a health information tool, to look up information about symptoms or a health issue, or to have a conversation based on their personalized situation. Here's what I'm feeling, here are my symptoms.

What do you think I should do? Things like that. That really hasn't changed, but what has in my research, I found that AI is moving from health information tool, but to really a decision-making layer and a tool that is actually changing health care decisions. So beyond asking AI what a symptom means or researching a condition, people are increasingly using its guidance to decide whether to seek care, even to shop for a health care product, like an over-the-counter health product, and what steps to take next. So I think that's been the most important acceleration of health AI activity in the last year or so.

Marcus Johnson (3:02)

Yeah, you have some fascinating numbers to support that. One from Rock Health Survey, 2025 December, 81% of people amongst AI users who asked the Chatbot health question, 81% acted on the result. Another stat from eHealth Survey from May of this year, 73% of people who use AI for health advice changed their care.

And also a second opinion, so people close to 70% of patients have used AI after a doctor's visit, according to a TEMBRA survey from this year, whether they're trying to evaluate treatment options, figure out what the test results are telling them. So that big change of they're still looking, maybe more of them arguably looking up information about health, more people acting on that information.

Rajiv Leventhal (3:53)

Yeah, and I think sometimes the natural assumption is that if AI is influencing decision-making, it's a negative, but that's not necessarily the case. Sometimes people's tendency is to sort of overact, and maybe because of anxiety and fear of what's going on, they go to the emergency room when they don't have to.

So it's not always the case that AI is telling you not to go to the doctor when you should be. There's lots of instances where AI becomes the first point of a healthcare journey where it then takes you to other sources to look up information, it takes you to a doctor or maybe avoids an unnecessary trip to the doctor. So there are ways where I think AI is a decision-making tool that has a positive impact, in addition to, of course, the ways it might have a negative impact.

Marcus Johnson (4:41)

Yeah. Well, really quickly, Beth, before I ask you about what you think has changed in this space, 44 percent of folks have little or no confidence in their ability to discern true health information, nearly half, according to May 2026 KFF poll. So Rajiv, how can consumers distinguish good AI-generated health advice from the bad?