Science is not about predicting,….it’s about explaining. Not explaining what is always true, but rather clarifying what is false.
A discouraging feature of mass movements is leaders coaxing people into sacrificing the present for some hallowed, predicted future. Whose blood, sweat, and tears (real or metaphorical) are shed? Who suffers? Be wary of those who preach historical inevitability, progress, destiny,……how many Georg Hegel (1770-1831) prophets must we endure?
Healthcare has “mass movements”. Admixtures of fear,…pain,…profits,…hope,…urgency,…hierarchy, and bad mathematics ferment within a cauldron of eminence- and prominence-based medicine decocting authentic communal priorities to vapor. Vapor is hard to measure and thus easy to disregard.
All sorts of predictions surround the 21st Century Cures Act – the attached article is a concise summary of what might become as influential as the Stabilization Act of 1942.
Rucker opines – “Medical and cost information is far more helpful if patients can use it on their own terms, with tools of their choosing.”
“Imagine a new generation of smartphone tools informed by patients’ actual data, changing the nature of patient engagement.”
How exactly will that improve mental health, drug abuse, obesity, sedentary lifestyles, ACE, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, autism,……? Smartphones certainly quicken our widget shopping and diversion-needs,……how does “more consumer choice” and “online economy” move us toward the Triple Aim?
Joe Kaempf, MD Medical Director CQI and Clinical Research Women and Children's Services Providence St. Joseph Health Portland, OR 97225