Based on reports from CNet.com, one small part of O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Meeting in San Francisco this week was about the next phase in healthcare–as they call it Health 2.0.
The essentials–lots of people, even more data, and big, bad technology. At the center of it all are innovative ideas that allow individuals to feel as though they are taking control of their health through at home testing (whether for some late-onset genetic condition or cardiovascular disease), whether they actually are taking such control or not. What is remarkable about these companies is not just that they have the potential to effect millions of people’s lives is that they also have the potential to conduct enormous research studies using the data of those who buy their tests and to create real-time disease communities online.
Also floated at Web 2.0 was the idea that there could be online user platforms that cut out the need to visit the doctor because nurses and physicians would be there online to chat with you (and presumably see you by your computer’s camera). No more long, painful waiting times in an uncomfortable waiting room for patients of the future. Moreover, why even train doctors using human beings at all? As I wrote here on the blog recently, the trend is moving away from human-based medical training to simulators. Web 2.0 experts believe that this trend really is going to stick–just as it did in the airline industry.
Does anyone think that something is missing here? Perhaps the human side of medicine? I mean–where did the people go? Now we can just swab our cheeks at home and get an envelope in the mail a few weeks later with our genetic test results, never need to go to the doctor for a check up, and our own physician gets trained on a computer simulation. Does anyone else worry that the human essence of medicine could get lost in all this advancement and glorious technology promised by Health 2.0?
I do. Even if it’s just a tiny worry, which it is, I do.
Summer Johnson, PhD