• 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
Uncategorized

Health 2.0 Houston and the Changing Face of Medicine

January 29, 2013 By Bryan Vartabedian · Reading Time: 3 minutes

Health20Houston

The following represents a rough narrative of my opening remarks at the launch of Health 2.0 Houston, January 29th, 2013

Let me be the first to welcome everyone to the launch of Health 2.0 Houston.  This is a huge night for the Houston medical community and anyone concerned with the future of health care.  Congratulations to Brian Lang and Laura Shapland for pulling off a tremendous event.  I’d like to think that it was my link bait promotional tweets that filled the house but I think it was more likely the huge effort that Brian and Laura put into this.  I want to thank them for giving me the opportunity to offer some opening remarks on how medicine is changing and how Health 2.0 Houston factors in.

This is truly the most remarkable time to be in medicine.  I always say that I’m convinced that I was born at just the right time in history.  I was trained as an analog physician but have been a witness to the digital revolution that Eric Topol has called The Creative Destruction of Medicine.  Everything we understand about what it is to be a doctor is changing.  If we were to fast-forward to the year 2050, the work of a physician would be unrecognizable.  We as physicians are being completely redefined.  And here’s how:

  • Technology. What we have traditionally done with our eyes, ears and hands has been replaced by technology.  I believe that we’re truly advancing into an era of post-human medicine.
  • Empowered patient. There has been nothing more powerful in the redefinition of the doctor than the empowered patient.  Patients are changing and they, in turn, are changing us.  For the better part of modern civilization our role as physician has centered around privileged access to information and knowledge.  But the web has created a type of disintermediation.  Patients can do more on their own.  They can share information and adjust what they’re doing based on the input of others.  And the physician encounter is evolving as a more narrowly defined element in an individual’s quest to understand their condition and get better.
  • Information.  And all of this is fueled by information, access to information and our ability to share it.

Despite the changes underway we’re still a profession of information and idea isolation.  Our culture of medicine is one that insists on permission before sharing or creating new ideas.  Many of us still live and work under a 20th century construct of patient care and communication.  Many physicians try to see the future through a rear view mirror.

So we have a lot of work to do to prepare the next generation of physicians.  Howard Rheingold has suggested that this generation needs a new set of literacies in order to survive.  We’re working on it.

I’m privileged to be co-teaching a course at Rice University this spring, Medicine in the Age of Networked Intelligence.  I believe it’s the first course of its kind that aims to teach basic digital literacies to the next generation of provider.  The course is being offered under a new program called the Medical Futures Lab, a collaboration between BCM, Rice and UT that seeks to address the problems facing medicine at the intersection with technology.

I’ll should add that my co-founder, Kirsten Ostherr, is an English professor.  And it makes perfect sense because the solutions to our most pressing health care problems often lie outside the verticals where we’ve traditionally sought answers.  It’s this sort of non-traditional collaboration that will fuel Health 2.0 Houston.  I see this as mixing the best of the Texas Medical Center with the most disruptive minds in health technology.  In the 20th century some of the greatest developments in medicine arose from the institutions of the Texas Medical Center.  The greatest health care innovations in the 21st century may well arise from the bottom or the edges of medicine, facilitated by groups like Health 2.0 Houston.

In closing I’d like to add that while technology has created the foundation for Health 2.0 Houston, the human spirit to build, create, innovate, participate and connect is what will drive it forward.  I look forward to the opportunity of meeting each and every one of you.

Related Articles

  • Rejuvenile Physicians
  • Medical Foo
  • Health Care Silos

Tagged With: Physicians, Technology

Related Articles

  • Rejuvenile Physicians
  • Medical Foo
  • Health Care Silos

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

Yes, Doctor

The Case for New Physician Literacies in the Digital Age

Doctors and social media: Damned if you engage, damned if you don’t

Health Care and the Visibility-Value Continuum

  • 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