Much
is spoken of patient-centric healthcare, providing more information to the
patient, the coming revolution in doctor-patient /
doctor-paramedical relationships.
Robin Farmanfarmaian, of Exponential Medicine, writes about the emerging shift in healthcare - the shift to patient-driven healthcare and "joint effort". The foundation of this patient-driven healthcare evolution is access: the increased access to up-to-date information via tools, gadgets, platforms and programs. This spans access to their own biometric data, access to information resources on their diseases as well as increased access to practitioners.
Critical to this is each patient's knowledge on how to access it and their ability to use the information once obtained. For example, did you know that the Cleveland Clinic offers an online service called "My Second Opinion"? Using this service, people from around the world can tap the knowledge of Cleveland Clinic's specialists in the USA to seek another assessment of their diagnosis, investigation or treatment.
Why is this important?
The other important piece of a joint-effort pie is provider of health information. The Doctor, and the role of the Doctor, has taken some battering in recent years. Watch this video from Stanford Medicine X of Vinod Khosla, who highlights the shortcomings of doctors and the art of solo-effort (and even team-effort) diagnosis.
The exact quote that Mr Khosla references in part during his talk is:
Patients are looking for certainty and consistency, both of which arise from the assumption that medicine, as a science, can provide both. This also implies their desire of exactness, singular explanations and the absence of grey. Much like a simple math problem, eg 2+2, it is assumed that when abiding to the rules of arithmetic, the result must always be 4.
But Mathematics is a language, and is thus also an art. It has levels of sophistication and complexity. There can even be widespread debate and consternation on the seemingly simplest of problems. In part, thus, it governed by rules but is opened to interpretation, based on the skill and prior experience of both speaker and listener.
The same has been argued about Medicine being a science and an art.
Why might people receive multiple different diagnoses, investigations and treatment plans? It is because the application of different skill levels and prior experiences of different doctors to the solution of a range of simple to complex problems will naturally lend different perspectives on the identity and solution of the same problem.
Which means doctors need to collaborate with other doctors (read: all health practitioners) as well as patients to deliver on this patient-centric medicine.
Robin Farmanfarmaian, of Exponential Medicine, writes about the emerging shift in healthcare - the shift to patient-driven healthcare and "joint effort". The foundation of this patient-driven healthcare evolution is access: the increased access to up-to-date information via tools, gadgets, platforms and programs. This spans access to their own biometric data, access to information resources on their diseases as well as increased access to practitioners.
Critical to this is each patient's knowledge on how to access it and their ability to use the information once obtained. For example, did you know that the Cleveland Clinic offers an online service called "My Second Opinion"? Using this service, people from around the world can tap the knowledge of Cleveland Clinic's specialists in the USA to seek another assessment of their diagnosis, investigation or treatment.
Why is this important?
The other important piece of a joint-effort pie is provider of health information. The Doctor, and the role of the Doctor, has taken some battering in recent years. Watch this video from Stanford Medicine X of Vinod Khosla, who highlights the shortcomings of doctors and the art of solo-effort (and even team-effort) diagnosis.
The exact quote that Mr Khosla references in part during his talk is:
“There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.” ― HippocratesMy interpretation (opinion!) of this is the level of humility both patient and doctor must retain when casting an opinion on the profoundness of the disease. An opinion implies certainty, but as Nassim Taleb asserts in his book "The Black Swan", it is the temptation, the arrogance of certainty that blinds you to the possibility of other explanations.
Patients are looking for certainty and consistency, both of which arise from the assumption that medicine, as a science, can provide both. This also implies their desire of exactness, singular explanations and the absence of grey. Much like a simple math problem, eg 2+2, it is assumed that when abiding to the rules of arithmetic, the result must always be 4.
But Mathematics is a language, and is thus also an art. It has levels of sophistication and complexity. There can even be widespread debate and consternation on the seemingly simplest of problems. In part, thus, it governed by rules but is opened to interpretation, based on the skill and prior experience of both speaker and listener.
The same has been argued about Medicine being a science and an art.
Why might people receive multiple different diagnoses, investigations and treatment plans? It is because the application of different skill levels and prior experiences of different doctors to the solution of a range of simple to complex problems will naturally lend different perspectives on the identity and solution of the same problem.
Which means doctors need to collaborate with other doctors (read: all health practitioners) as well as patients to deliver on this patient-centric medicine.
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