Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"November 10, 2026 4 min read
Add topic to email alerts
Receive an email when new articles are posted on
Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on . “
data-action=”subscribe”>
Subscribe
We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com. Back to Healio Key takeaways: An expert said AI has great potential for analyzing practice data and monitoring patients. Several steps, including testing and enforcing cybersecurity, are needed to ensure safe AI implementation in clinics. ORLANDO \u2014 AI offers value within lifestyle medicine thanks to its ability to raise practice capacity and lower administrative loads, a speaker at the American College of Lifestyle Medicine\u2019s annual meeting said. As AI within healthcare continues to expand, patients\u2019 openness to the technology may be underestimated by healthcare professionals, according to a recently released West Health-Gallup survey.
The survey (n = 5,330) showed that across three aspects of clinical care, between 38% to 56% of patients are comfortable with AI use if a provider is involved. The data also indicated that nearly 90% of providers personally used an AI tool or chatbot for at least one of several work tasks surveyed within the last year \u2014 yet just 20% reported receiving any formal training on use in healthcare settings. This shows \u201cmost of us are learning on the job without guardrails,\u201d David Donohue, MD, MS, DipABLM, FACLM, chief medical officer at Progressive Health of Delaware, told Healio. \u201cThat\u2019s why I push clinicians to start safely, with a business associate agreement before any patient data goes in, and then to run one learning loop on one real problem,\u201d he explained. \u201cSince patients are more comfortable than providers, assume when a clinician stays involved, that\u2019s the model we should build toward.\u201d Healio spoke with Donohue further to learn more about the current and potential use of AI within lifestyle medicine, how the six pillars can guide its utilization and more. Healio: How has AI been used in lifestyle medicine practice so far? Donohue: Most clinicians start with AI-assisted clinical searching, ambient scribes and personal productivity, and those help. The bigger opportunity is pointing AI at your own practice data. At Progressive Health of Delaware, we connected a HIPAA-compliant AI assistant to our electronic health record and asked a basic question: how much of the care our patients qualify for do we actually deliver? Across 19 covered preventive and care management services, we delivered 13.6% of the billable value, and we are a prevention-first practice. That audit pointed us toward team-based care management between visits. Later, when collections fell by a third after a billing platform switch, we connected the same assistant to our billing data and found eight separate problems, about $482,000 in claims we had earned and not collected. Healio: What barriers or challenges within lifestyle medicine could AI help remedy? Donohue: Lifestyle medicine works, but most patients who would benefit never get enough of it. In a typical practice, perhaps 3% of eligible patients enroll in a lifestyle program, and about half of those attend consistently. Primary care also has a capacity problem: modeling studies estimate one physician would need more than 24 hours a day to deliver all recommended care to a typical panel, and the evidence grows faster than any clinician can keep up with. AI can help on each front. It can follow every patient between visits with check-ins, reminders and coaching, find care gaps across the whole panel, put current evidence at the point of care, and take administrative work off the team so they have time for the human work of behavior change. Healio: Tips for clinicians who are new to AI or unsure where to begin? Donohue: Start safely: no patient data goes into any AI product unless a business associate agreement covers it. Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 both offer one. Next, use AI as a strategic partner before big decisions, and ask it to be your toughest critic. Then run what I call the learning loop: assess (measure one problem), plan (devise a solution), build (create the system with the help of AI), implement (put it into daily work with an owner and a start date), then reassess. Pick one problem and run one loop. Before you build anything complex, write a clear spec with a definition of done. And take security seriously, starting with two-factor login everywhere and cyber insurance. Healio: How can the principles and pillars of lifestyle medicine guide AI use? Donohue: Our north star is evidence and truth. A model\u2019s first answer tends to reproduce conventional wisdom, so ask for sources and check them, the same way lifestyle medicine has challenged conventional practice. AI should serve the pillars, not replace the people who deliver them. Nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress management, social connection and avoiding risky substances all depend on sustained behavior change and human relationships. Use AI to free your coaches, dietitians, nurses and clinicians for that work and to keep patients supported between visits, with clinical judgment staying with the clinician. Healio: Anything else you\u2019d like to add or emphasize? Donohue: Think bigger. We ask our patients to aim for remission and reversal. I ask clinicians to think bigger about what their practices can achieve, because today\u2019s tools can do far more than most of us ask of them. New Medicare payment helps too: advanced primary care management, the behavioral health integration add-on in 2026, and payment for health and well-being coaching starting in 2027 all create a way to fund team-based lifestyle care between visits. There is so much more opportunity than most people are aware of for delivering primary care lifestyle medicine! I want lifestyle medicine in the room, shaping AI-enabled healthcare around prevention, health restoration and human connection. For more information: David Donohue, MD, MS, DipABLM, FACLM, can be reached at primarycare@healio.com. Sources\/Disclosures<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}