The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Still, despite intelligent machines’ limitations, they will continue to play a bigger role in health care, even in the realm of intuitive medicine. Owing to their superior analytic power, machines are already providing more data upon which physicians base their diagnostic and treatment decisions. Machines are increasingly monitoring patients as well, helping to prevent human errors in hospitals and pharmacies. Soon, many more ancillary functions such as admissions, scheduling, and discharges will be automated.
But, again, until the scope of precision medicine surpasses that of intuitive medicine, health-care professionals will continue to make medical decisions and interpret the data. So, what are the prospects for such a shift?
Up until the mid-nineteenth century, bacterial and viral diseases were treated through intuitive medicine, because nobody had isolated the cause of patients’ symptoms. Then, Louis Pasteur and other scientists developed the germ theory, microscopes improved, and scientists began to identify the sizes and shapes of microbes.
Over the past century, our scientific understanding of germs has improved so much that every virus and bacteria can now be quickly diagnosed and isolated. This has enabled health-care professionals to switch from practicing intuitive medicine to precision medicine, where they can apply standardised processes that predictably cure diseases. With simple and inexpensive methods, we have eradicated deadly diseases such as polio and smallpox. More recently, researchers discovered an Ebola vaccine that provides 100% protection against the virus.
One day, when we have gained a similar level of understanding of the biochemistry and physiology of the human body, precision medicine will be applied to all disease categories. We will be able to determine every disease’s cause and progression precisely, and machines will operate with more autonomy, within a standardised environment, to provide the exact treatment that every patient needs.
Just as rules-based processes have laid the groundwork for self-driving vehicles, rules-based precision medicine will steadily increase the importance of automated super-machines in health care. It already feels routine to be prescribed antibiotics for an infection. Eventually, patients will have the same confidence in machines to administer their care; and as our understanding of diseases improves, personal interactions will become less necessary.
We shouldn’t expect machines to replace health-care professionals for some time, but new technologies will continue to be introduced into the sector’s evolving landscape, and we should welcome them. Practicing more precision medicine than intuitive medicine will make health care simpler, more accessible, and less expensive. By understanding patients’ diseases precisely, we can push medicine one step closer to its ultimate goal: patient-centered care of the finest quality.
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Spencer Nam is a senior research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation.
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Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2017.
www.project-syndicate.org
Computerizing medicalized health is way to go for Africa. It all depends. What gaps do we need to close ? It is like pointing out the real purpose of having a car which does 350 MPH. In very rare occasions does one need to get the gauge to 350 MPH! The same applies to the internet! It will be very useful when it increases on the critical number of Africans who can be categorised as “informed patients.” There is the disease and illness side to any ailment. The internet will help get many people in Africa aware of diseases. With interactive facilities, these people will add their own experiences of the “disease.” This experience is called illness. Africa needs technologies that create interactive patient forms. It needs to make her health care workers savvy enough. It needs to make her care facilities computerized. Most health workers are trained to diagnose diseases. Salaries are attached to disease groups. This explains the gap between what the health care workers prescribe and how patients make sense of things. If this disparity can be closed by the internet, Africa will begin to post quality care reports in large numbers. However, on the illness side, it is upon the skills and competence of the patient to break through the communication competence barriers that tend to arise in a doctor-patient relation. When patients become “informed patients” and are able to write or talk about their illnesses competently, we shall see a rise in the number of those who voluntarily seek quality life and wellness practices. All this is possible when Africa rises as one and invests in technologies that create interactive patient forms. It needs to make her health care workers savvy enough. It needs to make her care facilities computerized.