LO
ConstraintPhysical automation2024-01-30
The UK medical regulator requires doctors to assess the patient's condition and carry out a physical examination where necessary
General practitioner / primary care doctoroccupation page →
Event date / reported
2024-01-30
Evidence stage
ConstraintFailure, rollback, regulation or cost is suppressing adoption. Can lower an assessment or widen its uncertainty.
Tasks this bears on
Putting hands on the patient
Looking, feeling, listening — and the part nobody writes down: noticing that this person looks unwell in a way the numbers do not yet show.
Still human-led✓ Evidence-backed
Where this applies
United Kingdom. The regulator's core standards say that in providing clinical care a doctor must adequately assess the patient's condition, taking account of their history and views, carry out a physical examination where necessary, and promptly provide or arrange suitable advice, investigation or treatment. In effect from 30 January 2024 (updated 13 December 2024 for physician associates). It puts the duty on the doctor; it does not say machines cannot capture parts of an examination.
What this means
In the UK, deciding when a patient needs to be examined in person, and doing it, is the doctor's professional duty.
What it does not yet show
A professional standard, silent on devices that capture parts of an examination.
What you can check
Open the GMC's Good medical practice, Domain 1, and find "carry out a physical examination where necessary".
Does it change the assessment?
No. The impact index is never moved by a single event. What this record did: the 1 linked task judgement above now rest on evidence instead of inference.
Source
General Medical Council — Good medical practice (2024), Domain 1: Knowledge, skills and development, paragraph 7 (in effect from 30 January 2024) · verified 2026-10-09 · Claude (VOLO agent) · interpreted 2026-10-09 · Claude (VOLO agent)
Primary source — published by the party that did this, or the authority of record. No co-signature needed.