Author
Listed:
- Azizi A. Seixas
(Department of Informatics and Health Data Science, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, 1120 NW 14th Street, Miami, FL 33136, USA
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL 33136, USA)
- Debbie P. Chung
(Department of Informatics and Health Data Science, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, 1120 NW 14th Street, Miami, FL 33136, USA
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL 33136, USA)
Abstract
Modern healthcare remains structurally and conceptually fragmented, with profound clinical and policy implications. At its root lies an ontological fracture: the prevailing biomedical model reduces patients to discrete biological systems (organs, biomarkers, and symptoms) detached from the psychological, social, and ecological contexts in which health and illness are experienced. This is compounded by epistemological fragmentation, where medical knowledge is compartmentalized into increasingly narrow specialties, limiting holistic understanding. These philosophical divisions manifest in downstream operational, informational, financial, and policy dysfunctions duplicative testing, misaligned incentives, disconnected care pathways, and population health failures. To address these multilevel fractures, we propose a unified architecture grounded in three interlocking components. First, the Precision and Personalized Population Health (P3H) framework offers a principle-based realignment toward care that is integrated, personalized, proactive, and population wide. P3H addresses the conceptual shortcomings of fragmented care by focusing on the full human trajectory across time, systems, and determinants. Second, General Purpose Technologies including artificial intelligence, biosensors, mobile diagnostics, and multimodal data systems enable the operationalization of whole-person care at scale, especially in low-resource settings. Third, the AI-WHOLE policy framework (Alignment, Integration, Workflow, Holism, Outcomes, Learning, and Equity) provides governance principles to guide ethical, equitable, and context-specific implementation. We argue that this triadic blueprint is particularly critical for Global South nations, where the lack of legacy infrastructure offers an opportunity for leapfrogging toward integrated, intelligent systems of care. Early models illustrate how policy-aligned, technology-enabled care rooted in whole-person principles can yield improvements in continuity, cost-efficiency, and chronic disease outcomes. This manuscript offers a systems-level strategy to overcome fragmentation and reimagine healthcare delivery, not only by refining clinical tools, but by redefining what it means to care for the human being in full.
Suggested Citation
Azizi A. Seixas & Debbie P. Chung, 2026.
"Reintegrating the Human in Health: A Triadic Blueprint for Whole-Person Care in the Age of AI,"
IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 23(4), pages 1-18, March.
Handle:
RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:23:y:2026:i:4:p:426-:d:1908806
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:23:y:2026:i:4:p:426-:d:1908806. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask MDPI Indexing Manager to update the entry or send us the correct address
(email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.