Toward Relationship-Centered Care with AI: Designing for Human Connections in Healthcare

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly integrated into healthcare, offering benefits such as greater efficiency, enhanced care delivery, and more personalized patient support. Relationship-centered care (RCC) is a holistic approach that emphasizes trust, respect, and meaningful connections within the interpersonal and social contexts of care, recognizing that care quality depends as much on relationships among patients, clinicians, and care networks. As RCC gains prominence, it is critical to consider how AI can be designed to strengthen—rather than weaken—human connections in healthcare. This workshop introduces relationships as a design lens for AI in healthcare. Moving beyond a narrow focus on personalization and efficiency, it examines how AI systems shape relationships across patient–provider, patient–caregiver, caregiver–provider, and provider–provider contexts. Guided by the principles of RCC, participants will engage in structured discussions to: (1) identify relational challenges associated with current AI systems, (2) explore design opportunities for AI that foster trust, empathy, and collaboration, and (3) define future research and design directions for relationship-centered AI. By foregrounding relational support as a vital yet underexplored dimension, the workshop seeks to generate actionable insights for developing AI systems that actively sustain and enrich human relationships in healthcare, ultimately advancing both care quality and health outcomes.

Ähnliche Arbeiten