AI can end the narrative monopoly in Healthcare.
The rise of AI in healthcare will dismantling long-standing monopolies on information and break open a system long governed by regulatory paternalism and barriers to entry.
For decades, the centralisation of healthcare under the Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) and Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) framework has produced a narrow, top-down model of care. While this system has undoubtedly improved consistency and documentation, it has coincided with a healthcare landscape shaped by corporate profit motives, not patient outcomes: people are more likely to suffer obesity, cancer, nuerodegeneration, autoimmune disease... the list goes on. The result? The research and development pathway divides interventions into 4 categories:
effective and profitable (these receive public and private funding, and are adopted readily into CPGs),
ineffective and profitable (often adopted, atleast short term, with heavy marketing)
ineffective and unprofitable (discarded, appropriately) and
effective and unprofitable (stifled, suppressed, ignored, defunded).
Innovation is stifled, dissenting views are suppressed, and clinicians are relegated to guideline-followers rather than critical thinkers. AI is now disrupting that dynamic.
Industry will push AI's role for professionals into the secretarial and time saving roles. That's great.
But with advanced natural language processing AI can synthesise vast volumes of research, patient data, and emerging science into accessible insights—instantly, and at scale, in the palm of the end consumer. This democratization of knowledge undermines traditional gatekeepers and empowers both patients and practitioners to question, explore, and participate in health decisions with unprecedented independence. The monopoly on "what is allowed to be known" is fading - fast.
This shift will threaten the medical profession, but it isn't anti-science. In the end, the validity will be determined by the impact on patient outcomes. AI, like the scientific spirit, is curious, dynamic, and self-correcting. As AI tools enable personalised, systems-level insights that were once locked behind paywalls, credentials, or bureaucracy, we may finally see a decentralization of care that aligns with what must always be true north: the needs and outcomes of individual patients.