putting care back into healthcare

It's been seven months since I started a fellowship at Harvard Medical School's Center for Bioethics while continuing my role leading design for NIH's All of Us.

I took on this challenge because I saw a growing gap in healthcare: technology is evolving faster than our medical ethics frameworks can keep up.

Over the past 1.5 semesters, through weekly debates and discussions rooted in moral reasoning, ethical analysis, and collaborative decision making, I've come to a simple but urgent realization:

We don't just need better technology in healthcare. We need to put care back at the center of it.

Last month, I attended a book talk by Arthur Kleinman, a legendary medical anthropologist and physician currently in his last semester at Harvard after more than 40 years of teaching. As he reflected on his career, he reminded us:

it wasn't that long ago when a doctor wouldn't dare have their back to the door as a patient entered, never mind spending the entire visit looking at a computer screen.

His message was clear: we must work to bring care back into healthcare.

That moment resonated deeply.

Because as I navigate my own space in the world of technology, design, research infrastructure, and personalized medicine, I am really here because I, too, want to center care.

So now, in everything I do, I run a simple filter: Is this about care, or is it about something else?

And especially now, as AI-driven healthcare solutions flood my timeline, I believe we need to ask ourselves:

• Does this technology enable care, or just efficiency?
• Is this solving for patients and clinicians, or optimizing for the system?
• Are we designing with care in mind, or just reacting to change?

Design and technology aren’t neutral. They either reinforce the status quo or they help us build something better.

That’s my mission. That’s my lens.

What’s yours? How do you ensure care stays central in your work?

P.S. I highly recommend Arthur Kleinman's latest book: Soul of Care