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The Democratization of Medical Diagnosis and Discovery
An anonymous reader writes: As wearable fitness devices become popular, we're seeing the beginning of a change in how untrained people can monitor their own health. On top of that, we also have access now to powerful data-sharing tools — if a patient has the means and the interest to look at the data from a doctor's medical scans, she can. A post at the NY Times argues this is leading to the democratization of medical discovery. Physicians and researchers are now saying, "Better-informed patients ... are more likely to take better care of themselves, comply with prescription drug regimens and even detect early-warning signals of illness." These tools also allow easier aggregation of data from large groups of patients (hopefully anonymized), which can provide more accurate assessments of the typical course of disease than current methods, which often rely on interpretations of interpretations.
It also leads to rampant, self-diagnosing webochondria. I will admit, I am an offender in this respect.
With the number of self-misdiagnosed "gluten sensitives" we have walking around, who aren't sick at all, I really don't think giving the average untrained person (or the bizarre hipsters who think food sensitivity is cool) interpreting data. People with access to information they don't understand, or want to use for an agenda, don't end up making good decisions with that information.
" if a patient has the means and the interest to look at the data from a doctor's medical scans, she can."
I'm from Luxembourg, Europe and here all the scans have been done on CDs and DVDs for over a decade now and handed out to us patients, not the doctors. As soon as CDs got cheaper than chemical they switched, I must say I was impressed at the time.
For a copy of the lab-tests I have to pay 1€ to have a copy of the results sent to my address.
As almost everywhere on the world, electronic patient files are slow to come so it's like always:
If you want something done properly, do it yourself!
I have had good doctors and I have had some bad doctors, but most of the doctors I have seen have been in between. In the mid 1990's when I was diagnosed with hypertension I bought a good automatic BP meter and have taken and recorded my BP regularly ever since. I also make notes when there are variations in either direction as to what MAY have been the cause, and try to make any needed changes in my lifestyle. I ALWAYS take my numbers to my checkups and most of the time the readings in the doctors office do not correlate well with the readings I get at home. I have even had it called "white coat hypertension" by more than one doctor. As a result of this over the years I have been able to reduce the prescribed medications, in agreement with my doctor, by well over half -- maybe more and my BP is within the normal range for me whenever I take it. And yes, I have checked the calibration of my meter.
Another issue I have had is the two lesser forms of skin cancer, many Basil cell cancers, and a few Squamous cell ones. Although I have a checkup by my dermatologist twice a year, most of the time I find something that I am suspicious of for him to examine. As recently as 2013 I had a very tiny growth very near my left eye that appeared suddenly in the late fall, shortly AFTER my exam. I was suspicious that it was a skin cancer and called and got another appointment for an exam. My dermatologist did a biopsy, which was positive for Squamous, and I was able to have Mohs surgery to have it removed before the end of the year. It was still small and the surgery was much less invasive than it would have been otherwise. If I had let it go until my next check up I would have had to have reconstructive plastic surgery in addition to the Mohs surgery.
While I am not a doctor, and never wanted to be one, I am very much in favor of any device that can let me monitor my own body and then find a doctor that will listen to me.
I'm hoping for the Uberization of health care. There is no excuse for keeping medical information from the patient himself under the guise of "privacy," especially when governments get free and full access to the same data. Yes, a lot of people are faddish about health, but this is just as big a problem under today's locked-down system, and I resent having my right to self-discovery and choice of treatment limited because a minority of the gullible are following quack ideologies. In fact, believers in "supplements" and other nostra enjoy protected status under current law, while patients are rigidly prevented from getting open-market access to real medicine.
What our medical system really fears is not Obamacare, but the free market. To hospitals, doctors and pharma companies, socialism is just another set of rules they can game to keep their prices two orders of magnitude above the market.
All knowledge of any kind, leads certain types of people to believe they know more than they do.
"I watched every episode of LA Law, and I'm telling you, they are going to have to acquit that guy. Fruit of the poison tree! Fruit of the poison tree!"
"I've watched lots of porn so I know how to please a woman."
"I installed Wordpress, and now I know how to store things in a database. You just update_post_meta()! OMG, you're still using fields?! Loser."