Predictive Health: How We Can Reinvent Medicine to Extend Our Best Years
Health and aging, Science and technology
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
Summary
ItOCOs no stretch to claim that America is in the midst of a healthcare meltdown. Care is costly and unattainable for many, and often unsatisfactory even for those who can afford treatment. The medical system focuses on treating diseases and… their symptoms, and spends so much effortOCoand moneyOCoin the last miserable month of patientsOCO lives that little is left to make sure that the preceding years are as healthful as possible. In "Predictive Health," distinguished doctors Kenneth Brigham and Michael M. E. Johns propose to radically change the current model by restructuring the way patients receive care. They introduce the concept of predictive health, which will turn the existing paradigm on its headOCofocusing on prediction instead of diagnosis, and health rather than disease. Rather than treating symptoms as they arise, doctors practicing predictive health would be involved in a patientOCOs life right from the start. A drop of blood from a tiny heel prick at birth would be run through nanolabs, the resulting information assembled into a picture of the newbornOCOs health. Any potential risk factorsOCorisk for type II diabetes, genetic propensity for obesityOCowould be caught long before they became problematic, and strategies forged for treatment. In essence, health care professionals would become committed consultants, sticking with a patient for the entire course of their lives. The potential savings from this kind of partnership is staggering: the cost of lifelong health care would amount to less than the cost of a month-long stay in an early twenty-first century ICU. Interweaving descriptions of phenomenal advances in science and technology with illustrative anecdotes and personal experiences of the authorsOCO combined century in academic medicine, "Predictive Health" translates the foundations of the new biomedicine into language accessible to a general audienceOCothose who must understand the potential of the unprecedented opportunity confronting us if major change is to happen. The product of a decade-long collaboration between two of the leading figures in predictive health, "Predictive Health" offers a deeply knowledgeable, deeply humane look at the state of medicine today, and the potential for medicine tomorrow.