The Two Patients
Abraham Verghese's "iPatient": the flesh-and-blood patient versus the patient of data and pixels on the screen.
The chapter starts from the "iPatient", a concept coined by physician and writer Abraham Verghese: the virtual patient who lives on screens, spreadsheets and electronic records, and who risks receiving more attention than the real patient lying in the bed next door. André Leite and Vinícius Lain use this tension to open the book with an uncomfortable question: is technology bringing the doctor closer to the sick person, or putting a screen between them? They argue that AI only fulfills its promise when it gives time and attention back to the clinical encounter, instead of replacing it with data.