An interesting post from Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution:
In 2004 I wrote In Praise of Impersonal Medicine arguing:
I have nothing against my physician but I would prefer to be diagnosed by a computer. A typical physician spends most of the day playing twenty questions. Where does it hurt? Do you have a cough? How high is the patient’s blood pressure? But an expert system can play twenty questions better than most people. An expert system can use the best knowledge in the field, it can stay current with the journals, and it never forgets.
and in 2006 I noted:
The practice of modern medicine is surprisingly primitive … My credit card company knows far more about my shopping history than my physician knows about my medical history.
I now believe that we are on the cusp of major changes to medicine. The thousand dollar genome sequence is less than a year away, Ford has just developed a car seat that can monitor your health, many people are already using wrist monitors to measure heart and sleep patterns. All of this data will soon be combined with massive databases to offer predictive and prescriptive health diagnosis.
But my favourite part of the posting was this comment from Joseph Huntington:
Stay clear of Doctors. I am a lifelong physician. Cardiologist, Head Surgeon, UCLA for 17 years. Medicine today is riskier than any casino. I left the zoo when it became a Federal Collection Center for data that will likely be used in population selection. If you’re a model or athlete, you have nothing to fear. If you’re sub-average, or over age 35 … just sleep well, drink water, walk, breathe deeply, eat mostly fresh things, laugh, love, work honorably and again, stay away from guys like me.
