As a recent article from the Economist points out, the demand for health care is rising faster than the supply of doctors. Titled "Squeezing out the doctor," the article points out that technology is increasingly stepping in to perform tasks once performed by physicians. In addition, patients are empowering themselves and taking a greater role in their own healthcare.
In any event, the question of what role physicians will play in the future has been receiving a lot of attention of late. I've gathered what I think are some of the more interesting musings on the subject below and have bolded and italicized some of the key points.
![]() |
Pediatric gastroenterologist and social media expert Bryan Vartabedian:
|
![]() |
X PRIZE Foundation Chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis, MD:
|
![]() |
VP of Global Strategy & Market Development at Qualcomm Life Don Jones:
He had this to say about how the Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE could empower patients by enabling them to diagnose themselves:
|
![]() |
Eric Topol, MD, author of "The Creative Destruction of Medicine" and Professor of Translational Genomics at Scripps believes that Watson should play a key role in medicine but that computers will never be able to replicate the wisdome of an experienced physician:
|
![]() |
|
Brian Buntz is the editor-at-large at UBM Canon's medical group. Follow him on Twitter at @brian_buntz.