Today I’m going to write about some fundamental changes in the delivery of medical care that either are presently, or soon will change medical education.
Basically, these changes fall into three categories: 1) evidence-based medicine/computer medical record, 2) machine-assisted medicine and 3) individualized therapies. Let’s take them one at a time.
The advent of the computer medical record combined with advanced database query languages has facilitated the primacy of evidence-based medical care. The notion is that every aspect of a particular treatment for a patient is informed by the global evidence for that individual’s particular problem. This is quite different from the notion of individualized medicine, but just as powerful. Rather than simply relying on education and personal experience to treat patients, physicians will be constantly querying the “global” database about what the evidence says for treatment.
In the area of machine-assisted medicine, I am referring not only to the fabulous surgical robots that right now are changing medical outcomes (particularly in the cardiovascular and brain areas), but also to the advent of nanotechnologies whereby very small machines may deliver drugs at the location of a problem in the body using the circulatory system as the access pathway. I believe that machine-assisted medicine will require a sophistication in concepts of biomedical engineering as a new component of medical education.
Finally to individualized medicine. Here progress in genomics and proteomics will now allow medicine to move from a “one-size fits all” type of modality to one where the therapy is, as dependent upon an individuals biological “profile” as it is on the disease entity. Medical students of the future will need to acquire skills that are as focused on what makes a patient unique as opposed to the usual skill of learning what makes a patient like others (who have a particular differential diagnosis).
Food for thought about future medical education.
Jim
Discoverers and Discoveries 