What would it be like if you could to to your clinician’s office, and within a few minutes have a complete analysis of your blood done to detect whatever bug might be growing in there simply by the DNA of the organism?
It’s being doing now.
But why is there resistance to progress?
—
The Wireless Revolution Hits Medicine
• Updated April 16, 2012, 11:42 a.m. ET
Eric Topol talks about the upheaval that’s coming as the digitization of health care meets the smartphone
By RON WINSLOW
After 14 years as chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, Eric Topol moved to La Jolla, Calif., in 2006 to become director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, which was established to apply genetic discoveries to personalized medicine. Three years later, he helped launch the West Wireless Health Institute, for which he is vice chairman and which is investigating use of wireless technology in the delivery of health care.
The convergence of these two fields—genomics, marked by the rapidly plummeting cost of sequencing a person’s entire genetic code, and wireless, with its flurry of innovative health-care apps—led Dr. Topol to write “The Creative Destruction of Medicine,” a book that offers an illuminating perspective on the coming digitization of health care. It’s also a reminder that while medicine is one of the globe’s premier drivers of innovation, it is also a conservative culture that now finds itself buffeted by transformational change.
The Wall Street Journal’s Ron Winslow discussed the implications with Dr. Topol. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation:
Unnecessary Boundaries
WSJ: Let’s start with the title. “Creative Destruction” is a provocative term. What needs to be destroyed?
DIGITAL DOCTOR Eric Topol advocates the transformative power of technology like the MinIon, a disposable device being developed to sequence parts of an individual’s DNA; a mobile patient monitor enabled by an iPhone app; the Zio patch, worn above the heart to check for irregular heartbeats; and a contact lens embedded with a chip to measure eye pressure for people with or at risk of glaucoma.
DR. TOPOL: There are two levels. One is that in medicine, everything we do essentially is Read the rest of this entry »
Warm Southern Breeze 