Not socialized medicine. I think the solution is going to be developed by software engineers, I predict a terminal at every patient's bedside, all the records kept up-to-date, some kind of feedback loop to scan to see if orders are followed, if they conflict, if medication is given, if medications clash. The younger generation is all computer savvy, it's gonna take a decade, maybe, but it will come.
Another breakthrough, and I don't see how this will be done, will come when they are able to model interactions of medications. Polymedication, they call it. Most physicians just know their own specialty, and treat within that specialty, and so you see a heart doctor for your heart, and a liver doctor for your liver, and a kidney doctor for your kidneys, and so on, and each of them gives you a pill or two, and who knows how they interact? I think that some doctors are seeing that diseases don't exist in separate "boxes," it is a whole person who has a condition. But the ones like that are unusual. |
