Witches became Witch Doctors...what happens next...

The witch became the witch doctor.

The witch doctor became the physician.

The physician is becoming the overseer… and soon, largely the memory.

This is how it will (probably happen).

Phase 1 – Now through ~2030: The Doctor Becomes a Supervisor of Machines

Most routine care is already shifting to a new primary provider: AI + sensors + nurse practitioners / physician assistants.

You already don’t see a doctor for a strep throat, sinus infection, or birth-control refill in most developed countries.

By 2030, 70–80 % of primary-care visits will be handled by:

An AI front-end (chat + photo + home vitals) that triages and treats 50–60 % of cases without human intervention (think ChatGPT-level model trained on UpToDate + millions of dermatology images + continuous glucose/HRV/O2 data).

A mid-level clinician (NP/PA/pharmacist) who handles the 20–30 % that need a prescription or simple procedure.

The MD only touches the <10 % that are complex, rare, or high-risk.

Real-world proof:

Babylon Health (UK) and K Health (US) already resolve ~70 % of cases without a human review.

Sweden’s Kry and Denmark’s digital-first systems have cut GP visits by half in five years.

The Mayo Clinic is piloting an AI that outperforms general practitioners on diagnostic accuracy (NEJM 2024).

The doctor is turning into a high-end consultant the way pilots became supervisors of autopilots.

Phase 2 – 2030–2040: Personalized “Health Avatars” + Preventive Micro-Interventions

Your primary provider becomes a lifelong AI agent that knows your genome, microbiome, wearable data, and family history better than any human ever could.

It runs 24/7 Monte-Carlo simulations of your future health and nudges you (or auto-dispenses via implanted/injected devices) to prevent disease before it starts.

Your AI agent screens for pre-cancerous cells, and engineered probiotics become outpatient 15-minute procedures ordered by the avatar and carried out by specialized nurses or even robotic pods (like automated LASIK centers today).

At this point the average person sees a human physician about as often as they see a human airline pilot: only when something truly unusual happens.

Phase 3 – 2040+: Radical Life Extension Stack

Medicine stops being about “treating disease” and becomes about “upgrading baseline human biology.”

Your “care team” is:

A swarm of therapeutic nanoparticles (AstraZeneca and Moderna already have these in trials).

An exocortex AI that can read/write limited brain states.

Occasional visits to an “augmentation clinic” for telomere extension, myostatin inhibition, or cerebral blood-flow upgrades.

Human doctors still exist, but they’re closer to today’s Ferrari race engineers: hyper-specialized experts who only touch the 0.01 % pursuing extreme performance or longevity.

Timeline Summary

2025–2030 → Doctors become quarterbacks, not ball-carriers

2030–2035 → Most people’s “doctor” is an app + NP + quarterly lab draw

2035–2045 → Your lifelong AI health agent + automated therapeutics replaces 99 % of doctor visits

2050+ → Human physicians are for edge cases and elective biological upgrades

We’re not replacing doctors with “something better.”

We’re replacing the entire concept of episodic sickness care with continuous, predictive, mostly automated health optimization, and the human doctor becomes a rare, high-end specialist the way blacksmiths became art restorers after cars arrived.

The witch became the witch doctor.

The witch doctor became the physician.

The physician is becoming the overseer… and soon, largely the memory.