CYIL vol. 16 (2025)

CYIL 16 (2025) IS THERE A RIGHT FOR THE HUMAN TOUCH? AI AND THE FUTURE … If the process is guided well, we may arrive at a model of care in which doctors have more time for patients and for their own personal development. Patients, in turn, may be empowered through the expansion of shared decision-making: not merely giving yes-or-no answers to standardised information, but making decisions in the context of real dialogue with the physician about their personal needs. A new model of care could emerge in which healthcare workers do not simply repair individual diagnoses but act as coordinators of care for the patient as a whole person. The human touch – the knowledge that I am not facing illness alone, but accompanied by another person in whose consciousness my hopes and fears are held – could, in synergy with the technical quality of medicine, make healthcare not only more efficient, but also more humane. This is an ideal vision of the future, but it is not a utopia. We dare to hope that one day, such a vision might become part of the substance of the right to accessible healthcare.

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