Eric Topol talks about the upheaval that's coming as the digitization of health care meets the smartphone
By RON WINSLOW
After 14 years as chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, Eric Topol moved to La Jolla, Calif., in 2006 to become director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, which was established to apply genetic discoveries to personalized medicine. Three years later, he helped launch the West Wireless Health Institute, for which he is vice chairman and which is investigating use of wireless technology in the delivery of health care.
More in Innovations in Health Care
The convergence of these two fields—genomics, marked by the rapidly plummeting cost of sequencing a person's entire genetic code, and wireless, with its flurry of innovative health-care apps—led Dr. Topol to write "The Creative Destruction of Medicine," a book that offers an illuminating perspective on the coming digitization of health care. It's also a reminder that while medicine is one of the globe's premier drivers of innovation, it is also a conservative culture that now finds itself buffeted by transformational change.
The Wall Street Journal's Ron Winslow discussed the implications with Dr. Topol. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation:
Unnecessary Boundaries
WSJ: Let's start with the title. "Creative Destruction" is a provocative term. What needs to be destroyed?
Oxford Nanopore TechnologiesLtd.,
AirStrip Technologies Inc., iRhythm Technologies Inc., Sensimed AG
DIGITAL DOCTOR Eric Topol advocates the transformative
power of technology like the MinIon, a disposable device being developed to
sequence parts of an individual's DNA; a mobile patient monitor enabled by an
iPhone app; the Zio patch, worn above the heart to check for irregular
heartbeats; and a contact lens embedded with a chip to measure eye pressure for
people with or at risk of glaucoma.
DR. TOPOL: There are two levels. One is that in medicine, everything we do essentially is at the population level. Whether it's mass screening or giving the same medication to all people with a particular diagnosis, this doesn't recognize the individuality of people. I think it's fundamentally flawed. We now have the tools to do much better.
The other is this analog world medicine lives in. The field has resisted a truly remarkable digital infrastructure to the nth degree. It hasn't really embraced genomics, wireless biosensors or advanced imaging that could be used to make medicine more precise. Or social networking.
for full interview:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577311421888663472.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
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