• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

33 Charts

  • About
    • What is 33 Charts?
    • Bryan Vartabedian MD
  • Blog
  • 33mail
  • Foci
    • Social/Public Media
    • Physicians
    • Patients
    • Hospitals
    • Information
    • Process/Flow
    • Technology
    • Digital culture
    • Future Medicine
  • The Public Physician
Physicians, Social/Public Media

Context – Digital Medicine’s Biggest Problem

October 1, 2013 By Bryan Vartabedian · Reading Time: < 1 minutes

My annual trip to Stanford’s Medicine X this year has me seeing the value of stories.  There’s a certain irony baked into Medicine X: It’s about medicine’s shiny  future while at once being about the patient story.

And it has me thinking that context is digital medicine’s biggest problem.

It seems technology is reducing everything to its most basic element.  Clay Christiansen and Jason Hwang in The Innovator’s Prescription suggest that we are moving from a medical landscape that’s intuitive to one that’s precise.  And we seem to like it that way.  Precise medicine represents laser-targeted progress.  Precision captures headlines.  The latest advances serve as link bait for Twitter’s roving technoutopians.  Medicine X’s closing keynote was even delivered by Vinod Khosla who reminded us that a doctor just can’t do it like a machine.

But the problem with so many digital tools is the story. Because when it comes to humans, data can be understood only in the context of a patient’s story.  Patient stories are complicated.

Context is why

  • Medical advice on Twitter doesn’t work.
  • Dermatologic diagnosis may never ultimately be relegated to an iPhone alone.
  • Isolated genomic analysis will always have its limitations.

But we so want to dissociate ourselves from the sticky, human nature of disease.  Targeted, space-age diagnostics absolve us from our own clumsy nature.  The binary nature of data offers a clean escape from the hardest stuff.

There’s no doubt that precision medicine is coming hard and strong.  But context is why humans will always have some hand in the process of seeing it all come together.

Related Articles

  • Medicine's Emerging Digital Culture
  • Google Maps and the Calorie Question
  • My Immeasurable Digital Life

Tagged With: Medicine X

Related Articles

  • Medicine's Emerging Digital Culture
  • Google Maps and the Calorie Question
  • My Immeasurable Digital Life

Primary Sidebar

Bryan Vartabedian, MD

Bryan Vartabedian, MD
Bryan Vartabedian is the Chief Pediatrics Officer at Texas Children’s Hospital North Austin and one of health care’s influential
voices on technology & medicine.
Learn More

Popular Articles

  • The Fate of Fired Cleveland Clinic Resident Lara Kollab
  • Cures Act Final Rule – How It Will Change Medicine
  • 12 Things About Doximity You Probably Didn’t Know
  • Should Physicians Give Their Cell Phone Number to Patients?
  • Doximity Dialer Video – Telemedicine’s Latest Power Player

Sign up for 33mail newsletter

Featured Articles

Reactive and Creative Spaces

Doctors and the Endemic Culture of Permission

Context Collapse and the Public Physician

The Case for New Physician Literacies in the Digital Age

100,000 Connected Lemmings

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Footer

What is 33 Charts?

With a mashup of curated and original content that crosses the spaces of digital health, media, communication, technology, patient experience, digital culture, and the humanities, 33 charts offers unique insight and analysis on the changing face of medicine.

Founded in 2009 as a center of community and thought leadership for the issues doctors face in a digital world, 33 charts was included in the National Library of Medicine permanent web archive in 2014.
Learn More

Foci

  • Digital culture
  • Digital Health
  • EHR/Health IT
  • Future Medicine
  • Hospitals
  • Information
  • Patients
  • Physicians
  • Process/Flow
  • Quality
  • Social/Public Media
  • Technology

Copyright © 2023 · 33 Charts · Privacy Policy