num_pages: 384
description: A trip to the doctor is almost a guarantee of misery. You'll make an appointment months in advance. You'll probably wait for several hours until you hear the doctor will see you nowbut only for fifteen minutes! Then you'll wait even longer for lab tests the results of which you'll likely never see unless they indicate further (and more invasive) tests most of which will probably prove unnecessary (much like physicals themselves). And your bill will be astronomical.In The Patient Will See You Now Eric Topol one of the nations top physicians shows why medicine does not have to be that way. Instead you could use your smartphone to get rapid test results from one drop of blood monitor your vital signs both day and night and use an artificially intelligent algorithm to receive a diagnosis without having to see a doctor all at a small fraction of the cost imposed by our modern healthcare system.The change is powered by what Topol calls medicine's Gutenberg moment. Much as the printing press took learning out of the hands of a priestly class the mobile internet is doing the same for medicine giving us unprecedented control over our healthcare. With smartphones in hand we are no longer beholden to an impersonal and paternalistic system in which doctor knows best. Medicine has been digitized Topol argues; now it will be democratized. Computers will replace physicians for many diagnostic tasks citizen science will give rise to citizen medicine and enormous data sets will give us new means to attack conditions that have long been incurable. Massive open online medicine where diagnostics are done by Facebook-like comparisons of medical profiles will enable real-time real-world research on massive populations. There's no doubt the path forward will be complicated: the medical establishment will resist these changes and digitized medicine inevitably raises serious issues surrounding privacy. Nevertheless the resultbetter cheaper and more human health carewill be worth it.Provocative and engrossing The Patient Will See You Now is essential reading for anyone who thinks they deserve better health care. That is for all of us.
language: English
title: The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands
publisher: Basic Books