The Revolution started with good intentions, but we lost our collective minds
The advent of Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, etc. and the internet/social media phenomena was originally intended to augment our human reality not replace it. In a similar way, technology was intended to extend the vision and appreciation of medical doctors not replace, not replace the doctor-patient relationship. Similar to what has happened with social media, but even worse off course, medical technology is the cart leading the horse as well. Medicine has drifted far away from its moral and ethical roots- roots that were clearly articulated by doctors thousands and thousands of years before science, industry, and society had taken over.
Furthermore, thirty years, ago, a broad-based “revolution” in medicine began (not just to integrate new advances in medical technology) but an entire movement to deliver high-quality care at low cost. That revolution, and its countless iterations have resulted in a self-propagating spiral of insupportable costs, dehumanizing digitalization, and wholly inadequate population outcomes for what the nation is paying. The piecemeal solutions offered by the government, various organizations, systems, and most importantly payors, are at best piecemeal. None of the “fixes” address the most fundamental issues and the most important failing of the system; the almost complete loss of moral underpinning which is historically and appropriately foundational to healthcare.
Most important of all, and probably the most regrettable loss that we have suffered is that humanity is effectively no longer at the center of medicine. The result is that people now expect too much of the wrong things, and they don’t get enough of the right things.