Part 3 | AI Can Treat Diseases, but Only Humans Can Heal

Series Overview

Part 4. The Healing Industry as the Next Blue Ocean

Part 5. Why Healing Could Become the Most Promising Industry in the Age of Longevity

Part 6. Designing Happiness in the Age of Human–AI Coexistence

By Lim Byung-min (IBM), Columnist

We are living in an era in which AI is transforming healthcare. AI analyzes vast amounts of medical data, diagnoses diseases more quickly and accurately, and recommends treatments suited to individual patients. From detecting cancer at an early stage and identifying rare diseases to assisting with complex surgeries, AI has already become an important partner to human doctors. Its role in medicine will continue to expand, making treatment far more accurate and efficient than it is today.

Yet amid these advances, one question remains: Can AI truly heal people? Treatment and healing may sound similar, but they have different meanings. Treatment is a medical intervention intended to eliminate a disease or its symptoms. Lowering blood pressure, removing cancer cells, repairing broken bones, and preventing infection are all forms of treatment.

Treatment targets disease. Healing, by contrast, focuses on the person. It involves not only physical recovery but also the mending of emotional wounds, the rediscovery of meaning in life, and the courage to live again. If treatment is about curing an illness, healing is about helping a person rise again.

Patients who visit hospitals are not seeking only medication or surgery. The moment they receive a diagnosis, they confront a multitude of questions. Why me? How should I live from now on? What will happen to my family? Can I ever return to the person I once was?

There are no definitive answers to these questions because they concern life itself and cannot be resolved through medical knowledge alone. AI may provide statistics and probabilities, calculating survival rates, the likelihood of recurrence, and the prospects for successful treatment. But numbers alone cannot eliminate a patient’s fear. Even when the figures are identical, how patients understand them can differ greatly depending on who delivers the information and how it is communicated.

For example, an AI system stating, “The survival rate is 82%,” and a doctor looking into a patient’s eyes and saying, “There is plenty of reason for hope. Let us develop a treatment plan together,” may convey the same information but create entirely different experiences. The former provides information; the latter creates a relationship. Information remains in the mind, but relationships remain in the heart. Healing begins within such relationships.

Pain is not always the greatest source of suffering for patients. Anxiety about an unpredictable future, fear of becoming a burden on their families, and a sense of loss as though their lives are collapsing can cause even greater distress. At such moments, patients need not only accurate data but also the presence of someone who understands their emotions.

The experience of someone sitting beside them, listening to their story, enduring silence together, and saying, “You are not alone,” has a power entirely different from that of a medical prescription. Human beings live within relationships, and it is through relationships that they recover.

AI can analyze emotions, read facial expressions, detect tremors in a person’s voice, and generate comforting words. But calculating empathy is different from genuinely empathizing. Recognizing sadness is not the same as enduring that sadness together. Human beings can cry with others in their pain, share their joy, and offer comfort through a silence that speaks more deeply than words.

The warmth of holding someone’s hand, the compassion conveyed through a person’s eyes, and the willingness to spend time together may reflect the love of God, the transcendent Creator. The power of such love is difficult to quantify. Yet many patients find the strength to live again through this love.

In medical settings, some patients lose the will to live even after successful treatment. Others continue to live meaningful lives under the warm care of their families and medical professionals, even when a complete cure is difficult. This demonstrates that health is not determined solely by the presence or absence of disease. The body can be treated, but life must be healed.

This does not mean that AI and humans should be viewed as competitors. Future medicine will create its greatest value through collaboration between them. AI can analyze data faster than humans, reduce errors, and support more accurate diagnoses. Using the information AI provides, people can seek to understand a patient’s life, share hope, and endure difficult moments together.

As AI makes treatment more accurate, humans must make healing more profound. The further technology advances, the more important the value of humanity will become. The defining strength of future medicine should not be a hospital’s possession of the most advanced AI, but a healthcare environment that combines the precision of AI with human warmth.

We often say that technology will replace humans. At least in the realm of healing, however, technology is more likely to become a tool that helps people become more fully human. AI can assist medical professionals and make a doctor’s hands more precise, but it is ultimately another person who touches a patient’s heart. The depth of healing comes from human empathy and trust, love and relationships.

We may therefore describe the future in this way: The power that enables people to live with dignity ultimately comes from other people. This is a human value that remains unchanged even in the age of AI. It is also the most fundamental principle that medicine must continue to uphold.

Korea IT Times Editorial Board More by this reporter

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