What 500 Doctors Taught Me About the Future of Healthcare
I grew up surrounded by doctors. My dad was a cardiologist, my uncle an ER doc. I was pre-med—but I never wore the white coat. (I do know how to apply a band-aid pretty well.)
Instead of medical school, I took a different path—law school, biotech investing, McKinsey. I ended up in healthcare, not as a doctor, but as someone who studies doctors.
Over the past few years, I’ve interviewed over 500 doctors across every specialty you can think of.
A neurologist in New York. An orthopedic surgeon in India. A gastroenterologist in Japan.
The goal? To help healthcare companies “see around the corner” — identify unmet needs, develop new solutions, and shape the future of care.
But somewhere along the way, I found myself learning something deeper. Not just about market trends or product opportunities—but about the human dynamics shaping modern medicine.
Here’s what I’ve learned.
1. Medicine isn’t what it used to be — and doctors know it.
My grandfather was an internal medicine physician. The kind of old-school doctor who made house calls with a black medical bag. For him and others of his generation, practicing medicine was a calling.
Ask doctors what they like about their job, and you’ll hear a few common themes: Seeing patients. Problem solving. Helping people. Making an impact on people’s lives.
Unfortunately, doctors today are buried in administrative tasks. One hospitalist told me she spends just 2% of her day with patients. The rest is electronic medical record (EMR) tasks and paperwork.
The corporatization of healthcare has changed medicine, making many doctors feel alienated from their work.
Doctors are under pressure to hit quotas, minimize time spent between patient visits and maximize billing. They’re battling insurers about getting patients with serious illness preapproved for medication.
The result? High rates of physician burnout. A study found that half the physician population in our country is suffering from burnout.
One private practice doc said:
“I don’t like being told what to do by people who don’t know anything. Dollar signs shouldn’t make you make decisions that ruin your practice. Patient care has declined.”
2. Doctors Want to Treat Causes, Not Just Symptoms.
Healthcare in the US is often described as “sick care.”
By the time many patients enter the healthcare system, they’ve already developed chronic illness like diabetes or heart disease. Doctors can prescribe medication or recommend surgical procedures, but this doesn’t fix the underlying problem—which is often caused by the patient’s lifestyle factors—poor diet, lack of exercise, stress, sleep quality.
Cardiologists treat heart attacks and send patients home—only to see them back in the hospital a month later after they go back to McDonalds. Reproductive endocrinologists see fertility challenges tied to obesity, hypertension, and drug use—but often lack tools to address the root causes.
Doctors need better tools for behavior change, not just better pills.
The MAHA Effect
There’s a growing disconnect between traditional medicine and the MAHA movement when it comes to chronic disease management. Doctors must remind patients of the limitations of natural cures and lifestyle-based interventions:
“I’m sorry but no amount of meditation is going to cure your cancer.”
Doctors report more patients coming in asking for alternative or functional medicine approaches to get at the “root cause” of their illness. However, the “natural” supplements promoted by alternative medicine practitioners are not necessarily harmless.
An anesthesiologist told me:
“Liver injury due to supplement use has skyrocketed. The industry is highly unregulated, leading to charlatans saying, ‘Your host of nonspecific symptoms can be cured if you buy my hormone panel and my supplement.’
People are desperate for cures where modern medicine has failed them in its focus on sickcare, as opposed to healthcare, and are falling for grifters left and right.”
3. Wearables Give Doctors New Data—But is it Helpful?
Doctors have mixed views on wearable devices. On one hand, wearables like Apple Watch, Fitbit and Oura are expanding access to real-time vital sign tracking. More people are able to measure their sleep health, respiration, heart rate, and blood pressure. This is particularly useful for high-risk patients with heart disease or other chronic illness.
Cardiologists say more patients are showing up to the clinic with data from their Apple Watch. In some cases, it’s helping doctors make real diagnoses (e.g. for atrial fibrillation).
But there’s a catch. Some doctors feel overwhelmed with the amount of data coming in from wearables and health apps. There aren’t always clinical guidelines for how to incorporate this data into treatment decisions.
One doctor said:
“Who’s going to read and interpret all this data? There aren’t enough hours in the day.”
4. Young Doctors Are Rewriting the Rules.
They’re more open to new health tech. More willing to try out digital tools. More likely to use social media to educate and connect with patients. But they also want a different kind of career—one that leaves room for family, flexibility, and purpose.
Older MDs are more often set in their ways. They stick with what they’re used to, what they’ve trained with. They tend to be skeptical of new medical technology unless they see clinical data showing it can improve clinical outcomes (i.e. prevent hospitalizations and readmissions, reduce morbidity and mortality) and is safe and reliable.
More experienced doctors tend to be the key opinion leaders (KOLs). They have the most name recognition, the most influential articles in medical journals. But young doctors are the ones being trained on new technologies—from AI diagnostics to smart medical devices and surgical robotics—shaping the future direction of healthcare.
5. Doctors are Embracing Social Media.
More people are using ChatGPT to diagnose symptoms and interpret lab results. They’re turning to health influencers, many of whom have no medical or scientific training, for guidance on weight loss and healthy aging.
Doctors are frustrated by the spread of misinformation on social media: Anti-vax messaging, fad diets, unproven supplements.
At the same time, more doctors are embracing social media. This marks a big shift in the last few years. Until recently, doctors limited their public health communication to medical journals and conferences, or newspaper op-eds. They shied away from YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.
That’s changing.
Doctors see social media as a way to expand their reach and improve patient education. They’re using it to debunk health misinformation. Some MDs are even hiring social media marketing managers to help grow their following and create content to enhance their personal brand.
The top physician influencers in the US today have millions of followers. It’s a paradigm shift in how doctors communicate to the public and share medical information.
6. The Rise of Virtual Care is Changing Medicine.
Technology is enabling doctors to treat more patients outside the hospital. Telehealth and virtual health consultations have become common across the US.
The practice of medicine is shifting to a hybrid model that combines in-person consultations with virtual care. Proponents of the “hospital at home” model envision a future where the patient’s home is like a mini hospital room. Remote health monitors with real-time data transmission will alert doctors and nurses when an intervention is needed.
Doctors have mixed feelings about new services that offer home-based lab testing and full-body MRI scans.
One doctor told me:
“Patients are going to Function Health and getting all these lab tests but without interpretation or follow-up. No doctor is telling them what to do with their abnormal lab value.”
While doctors are optimistic about ChatGPT’s potential as a diagnostic tool, they urge caution about relying on AI for medical opinions:
“ChatGPT can’t differentiate between random shit it reads on Tumblr and actual research. Hopefully it will get better. So far it doesn’t seem equipped to replace us.”
So what does this mean for the future of healthcare?
Medicine is at a tipping point.
The next wave of healthcare innovation won’t just come from AI and diagnostics—it will come from restoring human connection, supporting preventive care, and empowering doctors to be doctors again.
If we want to fix healthcare, we have to rebuild from the inside out—starting by listening to doctors and giving them back the time, tools, and trust to do what they do best: heal.
Thank you for reading this week’s edition of Vitamin Z.
Until next time,
Note to readers: I just launched my new professional website and am currently taking on new consulting clients. If you have suggestions of people I should talk to, please shoot me an email. Thanks!
By Daniel Zahler
Hi there and thanks for reading. I created Vitamin Z to share my research on health and wellness, longevity and healthy aging, and ways to optimize cognitive, physical and emotional health. I have interviewed hundreds of doctors and health system leaders to help my clients spot trends and opportunities in healthcare. I am an advisor to Noom, a digital health company helping millions live better longer, and a project leader at GLG, where I advise global business leaders on healthcare innovation.
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Really liked hearing this from someone who’s been following doctors from a different perspective. I’m a med student, and you’re spot on. Many of my friends and colleagues are thinking about medicine in a tech-forward way, both directly and indirectly I would add.
I actually started writing on Substack specifically to talk about the future (and sometimes the past) of healthcare and health tech. I have an article coming out tomorrow with my “predictions” for the coming decades and well… I hope I’m wrong about most of them.