I started writing computer code when I was 14. I am 53 now, so that interest has had a pretty good run. I have used software from the WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 era all the way through the current wave of AI coding tools, medical scribes, and EMR platforms. Across those 40 years, a few pieces of software have stood out because they seemed to understand the person using them.
Those programs felt considerate. They anticipated what I was trying to do. They spared me steps. They respected my attention. Someone had thought carefully about the frustration on the other side of the screen.
After 30 years in medicine and decades around software, I have come back to one shared ingredient: empathy.
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Empathy Makes Better Doctors
The clinical side is easy to understand. A good doctor has to notice the patient in front of them. The fear behind the question. The reason the medication was stopped. The way a patient talks around the part of the story that scares them. Empathy helps you hear the problem more accurately.
That is probably what pulled many of us into medicine in the first place. We wanted to take care of people. We wanted to be useful in hard moments.
The problem is that the healthcare system keeps asking clinicians to spend that empathy somewhere else. We spend it decoding insurance rules, cleaning up inboxes, finding old labs, clicking through required fields, and documenting long after the last patient leaves. By the time the day is over, the thing that made us good at the work has been taxed all day.
Empathy Makes Better Software
Software empathy is quieter. It shows up when the program understands that the user is busy, interrupted, and responsible for something that matters. In a medical office, that user might be a physician trying to stay present with a patient, a front-desk employee managing three phone calls, or a medical assistant tracking down a missing form while rooming the next patient.
That work is difficult. It is mentally taxing. It is also easy for software companies to underestimate because the work gets broken into tiny pieces: one checkbox, one dropdown, one required field, one task, one denial, one message, one patient instruction.
Every click is work. Every extra tab is a small interruption. Every field that exists for the system before the visit asks the clinician or staff member to pay attention to software at the exact moment they need to pay attention to a person.
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Start Free TrialMost EMRs Were Designed for the System
Look at the EMR software most clinicians use every day. The design goal is obvious. It was built to fill out fields, create claims, support codes, manage denials, and satisfy administrative requirements. CPT codes, ICD codes, quality metrics, insurance rules, and billing workflows shaped the experience.
Those pieces matter. A practice has to get paid. Claims have to be clean. Denials have to be managed. Grail will do that work well as that part of the system matures.
But the first focus has to be the people doing the work. The physician trying to think clearly. The NP or PA trying to move through a full schedule. The therapist trying to capture a clinical narrative. The staff member trying to keep the day from falling apart.
What We Are Trying to Build at Grail
Grail is being built with a simple idea in mind: someone should have considered the work you are doing. The software should recognize that the work is important. It should make that work a little easier so you can focus on the patient, the plan, and the next right step.
That means fewer clicks. It also means better defaults, cleaner workflows, notes that sound like the clinician, and systems that turn the visit into the work that follows. Staff tasks, patient instructions, forms, follow-up, and documentation should come from the clinical encounter with less data entry after the visit.
The goal is software that feels like it noticed you. It noticed that you are carrying a full clinic day, a waiting room, a staff inbox, a payer system, and a patient who came in hoping someone would listen.
Empathy does not make software soft. It makes software precise. It forces the builder to care about every click, every interruption, and every unnecessary decision. That is the kind of EMR I wanted as a doctor. That is the kind of system we are trying to build.