Doctor Tomorrow

I would begin by disagreeing with Albert Schweitzer straight away. All Humans have always been custodians of their own health until we started delegating responsibility after responsibility of our own selves to others. But I would have to agree with Albert Schweitzer in that in a strange circle of events we will once again empower the individual to be in charge of their own health.

The earliest doctors were relegated the responsibility of keeping the village healthy and over the years they acquired a demigod position from which the modern Doctor is also refusing to move out.

These druids of yore who eventually have become the doctors of today specialized and developed modern medicine to what it is today. In the process they increased the chasm of ignorance between what the individual human knew of medicine to what the doctors learnt laboriously over their entire course of life.

Into this divide comes in the Internet rapidly bridging the gap of knowledge between individuals and Doctors. Literally putting entire life time of academic medical information into the hands of anyone with a connected device. What's more with wearable technology even hallowed procedures like measuring the pulse rate or blood pressure can be commonly accessed by anyone reducing multiple visits to the healthcare system.

Many devices which we thought were science fiction are now a reality and the time is coming soon when the individual themselves will be their own doctor; if not to treat at least to diagnose and more importantly predicatively prevent many life-threatening issues. The Communicator of Star Trek was the fantasy toy for everyone of the 80's but the iPhone today is in practically everyone's hands and provides much more computing power than even Kirk could have imagined. Many could argue for the rather detrimental effects of cell phone use but no one could disagree that the small device in your pocket has changed the world in so many ways.

Healthcare has already changed to a great extent with mobile technology and it will only be a matter of time that the revolution will take an exponential turn once the scalability issues are sorted out between people like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

So with all this technology enabling the individual to monitor and manage their health there will still exist a role to be played by Doctor Tomorrow. S/he will not be like the druids of yore but will have to guide the connected and enabled patient to better healthcare and intervene when necessary. I really do not see anyone doing their own root canal therapy in the near future even with all the preventable technology to prevent caries. A niche group of technologically enabled doctors will slowly replace this monstrosity called modern medicine. That sounds bit far fetched but then humans did go to the moon with less computer power than an iPhone.

More to come up soon. Your comments and suggestions are welcome.