Algorithmic logic meets patient centredness

The importance of the doctor-patient relationship has been recognised by physicians from Hippocrates1 to Osler2 and on to the present day. Yet the rise of science since the ‘enlightenment’ has acted to turn the profession’s focus away from this relationship toward more biomedical matters. General practice in particular rediscovered the importance of the doctor-patient relationship in the latter part of last century, helping to define general practice as a separate medical discipline.3 Yet, as we enter a newly technological, scientific age of medicine, are we in danger of losing that focus again?

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