Feel your way through it: Why touch matters in a technology intensive world

By Jessica Lees

In an age of smart devices, virtual reality, and AI-assisted diagnostics, it’s tempting to think that the future of health professional education is moving towards the digital. But when it comes to teaching hands-on clinical skills, like physical examination, something vital remains: human touch.

My PhD research explored how clinical educators teaching health professions students are navigating this very tension. During my research I spoke with clinical educators across medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, and midwifery to understand how digital technologies are shaping the way we teach touch-based skills. The findings? Far from replacing touch, technology is becoming a highly integrated part of how we teach and feel it.

Take, for instance, the use of real-time ultrasound during a pelvic floor assessment in physiotherapy. One educator described how this tool allowed both teacher and student to see what was being palpated—connecting visual feedback to haptic experience in a way that deepens embodied understanding. In another example, students listened to cardiac murmurs played aloud through an amplified stethoscope, transforming an otherwise private moment of ‘clinical listening’ (auscultation) into a shared sensory learning experience.

These examples reflect what we came to describe as a kind of digital-body synergy. Educators are using digital tools to enhance sensory acuity, scaffold motor learning, guide real-time decision-making, and provide feedback in increasingly sophisticated ways. Yet many of these tools have become so embedded in the learning environment that they’re often invisible, used instinctively but rarely reflected on.

To support educators in navigating this evolving space, we developed the Teaching Touch with Technology (TTT) framework (Figure). It maps five distinct ways digital tools are currently being used to support embodied learning: for sensate knowing, modelling, rehearsing, guiding practice, and providing feedback information. Rather than treating technology as an add-on or a threat, the framework invites educators to be more intentional in how they blend digital tools with touch-based teaching, to reflect on how technology can amplify, rather than replace, the relational and sensory dimensions of clinical practice.

However, despite digital technology integrated presence, concerns persist. Some educators expressed worry that technology could distance students from patients or deskill the finely tuned clinical instincts that come from repeated, hands-on practice. What these perspectives highlight is not a rejection of technology, but a desire to preserve the relational and humanistic elements of healthcare in a changing educational landscape.

Rather than framing technology and touch as oppositional, we need to recognise the ways they co-exist. Teaching physical examination today isn’t about choosing one over the other, it’s about integrating them in ways that support embodied, experiential learning. So yes, digital tools are changing the way we teach touch. But they’re not making it obsolete. In fact, when used thoughtfully, they can make our teaching more deliberate, more inclusive, and perhaps even more human.

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