"Combat" by Stanley William Hayter, 1936.
Hayter trained as a chemist and geologist before pursuing art, eventually founding Atelier 17 in Paris and working with Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko (among many others.)
Monday, November 23, 2009
Stanley William Hayter
"Combat" by Stanley William Hayter, 1936.
Hayter trained as a chemist and geologist before pursuing art, eventually founding Atelier 17 in Paris and working with Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko (among many others.)
The Future of Medicine?
Sorry it's been a while -- but with the musculoskeletal final safely behind me I can turn to RMV again...
One question that occasionally passes through my mind is "What is medicine going to look like 30 years from now?" In my 50's, I'll probably be at about the highest arc of my career, but will that career be recognizable? After all, scientific progress proceeds exponentially -- in the 2040's, the present era will probably seem just as quaint as the 1890's do now. Many older physicians tell me that a great deal of what they learned in medical school is obsolete, a trend that has no sign of fading.
What brought this to mind was an article in Wired magazine (sorry, not online yet) about the Archimedes organization, whose goal is to produce a computer program that can quantitatively model the human body, completely. Quite an ambitious project, considering the untold intricacies of human physiology -- here is a chart that shows JUST the metabolic reactions! If successful, this would be a holy grail for medicine. Every drug's effect could be simulated before touching a human. Combined with genetic information, treatment algorithms could be personalized for each individual. Already, the designers have used their system to predict the outcomes of major randomized drug trials, successfully.
I personally think this was a great thing, but the article was not as positive. Will a computer take over the role of a physician? I doubt it. Physicians have always use tools, tests, and rubrics; this will just be a very powerful one. A human being is still the most adaptable and easily programmable computer we have, and physicians will always be needed to interpret for patients the results their science gives them. The doctor of the future will probably need to know much more about statistics then they are currently asked to -- the spheres of epidemiology, computer science, and individual medicine are rapidly colliding.
One question that occasionally passes through my mind is "What is medicine going to look like 30 years from now?" In my 50's, I'll probably be at about the highest arc of my career, but will that career be recognizable? After all, scientific progress proceeds exponentially -- in the 2040's, the present era will probably seem just as quaint as the 1890's do now. Many older physicians tell me that a great deal of what they learned in medical school is obsolete, a trend that has no sign of fading.
What brought this to mind was an article in Wired magazine (sorry, not online yet) about the Archimedes organization, whose goal is to produce a computer program that can quantitatively model the human body, completely. Quite an ambitious project, considering the untold intricacies of human physiology -- here is a chart that shows JUST the metabolic reactions! If successful, this would be a holy grail for medicine. Every drug's effect could be simulated before touching a human. Combined with genetic information, treatment algorithms could be personalized for each individual. Already, the designers have used their system to predict the outcomes of major randomized drug trials, successfully.
I personally think this was a great thing, but the article was not as positive. Will a computer take over the role of a physician? I doubt it. Physicians have always use tools, tests, and rubrics; this will just be a very powerful one. A human being is still the most adaptable and easily programmable computer we have, and physicians will always be needed to interpret for patients the results their science gives them. The doctor of the future will probably need to know much more about statistics then they are currently asked to -- the spheres of epidemiology, computer science, and individual medicine are rapidly colliding.
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