The Edge of Medicine: The Technology That Will Change Our Lives [Hardcover]

William Hanson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2008

Experts agree that we are entering the Golden Age of Medicine, when our everyday experience of being ill and getting better will be more like science fiction than today’s routine trip to the doctor.

Bill Hanson, director of the surgical intensive care unit at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center and an inventor of medical technology, offers true-life and intensely intimate stories about the way biotechnology is changing people's lives.
• An electronic nose that detects infection, such as pneumonia, based on a person’s breath
• Robots with appendages that can feel their way around tissue, which will augment the hands of surgeons in the operating room
• Computer health wizards that will advise and prescribe through your home computer
• Computerized psychotherapists dispensing advice about emotional problems
• Telehealth software that serves as a monitoring nurse for difficult to manage chronic illnesses such as diabetes.
• Wheelchairs operated by reading electrical brainwaves for patients with severe neurological deterioration.

Bill Hanson describes the human genius that arrived at these amazing discoveries, and how innovators are working to take these feats to an even more technologically advanced level. And more importantly, he discusses what the human experience will be and how we can prepare ourselves for the moral and ethical challenges that these awesome changes will bring. This riveting and startling account will make us revise our expectations of our own mortality.

 

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The work is informative, coherent, extremely well written, and easy to read; it will make readers acutely aware of the vast number of high-tech advances with potential to have a profound, positive impact on medical diagnoses, treatments, and outcomes. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through  professionals/ practitioners; general readers." -CHOICE

 

"(A) spirited, feel-good look at an area of medicine that’s making progress."--Kirkus

"The Edge of Medicine is a revelatory look at the amazing technology that will drive our medical future, from proton beams to mind-reading brain chips. Dr. Hanson is the ideal guide: knowledgeable, thoughtful, and fun."--Jack El-Hai, author or The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness

“A rare glimpse into the future of medicine, through the eyes of a Renaissance thinker with a remarkable grasp of history and modern science, combined with deep compassion for patients.  He sees linkages among vastly different sciences, such as physics, nanotechnology and computer sciences, that others often miss.  He envisions a melding of scientific advances in physics and chemistry with those in communications technology, leading to an exciting era of personalized healthcare that seemed impossible only a few years ago.  Throughout, he never fails to focus on the human side of healthcare; few could lead us there so elegantly. “-- David E. Longnecker, MD, Director at the Association of American Medical Colleges

"A riveting and readable account of the future of technology in health care. Dr. William Hanson makes a convincing case that the ultimate goal of tiny nanomachines and gargantuan proton beam facilities is a medicine that is preventative, efficient, and personalized."--Arthur L. Caplan, Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine 

About the Author

William Hanson M.D. is an anesthesiologist and chief of intensive care at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School as well as an Associated Faculty member of the Computer Science Department at Princeton University, where he has taught a course on computers in medicine. He is often quoted in USA Today and US News & World Report, and has been profiled in Popular Science and New Scientist. He lives in Philadelphia, PA.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 1 edition (October 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0230605753
• ISBN-13: 978-0230605756
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #968,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He's great -- heard him on the radio, November 19, 2008

By 

Sharon Acres "Sharon" (Tarrytown NY, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Edge of Medicine: The Technology That Will Change Our Lives (Hardcover)

I heard this guy on Terry Gross & Marty Moss-Coane. He was awesome. They don't make doctors like that anymore. At least I can't find them. I got a copy of the book from my husband and read it straight through. If you are interested in how technology is shaping the technical and human side of medicine, you will love this book. It's not often you run across someone who can relate Hypocrates to telemedicine.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Adoption Curve's Economic Dilemma, April 16, 2009

By 

Lance Manning (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Edge of Medicine: The Technology That Will Change Our Lives (Hardcover)

The Edge of Medicine employs a rich symphony of details only a medical school professor could author. This is a great book for medical professional and lay-person alike. The concepts featured, from personal diagnostics to regenerative medicine, are introduced in a way for the reader to understand current clinical context and the vision of future healthcare delivery.

However, the technologies reported on are not new. These innovations have been in practice, albeit under the radar, for the last 3-5 years. In the coming years, they will form a new layer of "standard of care" demand. For instance, an Army Medical Hospital that treats soldier wounds with a regenerative medicine resolution will do the same for a civilian auto accident survivor. Little by little, what is offered as cutting edge to one group will soon be offered to another. Yet, hospital system economics will dictate care delivery based on ability to pay. More and more, we will see standard of care and affordability barrier trajectories go up in a direct relationship. Those who want to read more about the upcoming disparities in futuristic medicine should read Joel Garreau's book, Radical Evolution.

The adoption curve's economic dilemma is examined further.

The author accurately portrays stakeholder intent in the cost of healthcare: the provider and insurer want to maximize revenues. This means costs are maximized for payers. The payer is the only stakeholder that wants to reduce their costs. What does this mean for the adoption of life saving and cost saving products and services? Providers employ a competitive advantage by advertising a - high quality, low error, reduced pain, and reduced time of stay - patient solution. They are delivering better technologies to stay out in front of patient demand. They don't do so because it's a cheaper way to go in terms of investment dollars. Take robotic surgery, for example. It is not less expensive to deliver this type of care. However, hospital systems advertise client testimonials telling of the satisfaction of quick recovery and painless intervention. They bank on higher utilization of the services rendered. This provides cost justification for the technological implementation.

In the last few years, business model innovation in healthcare has moved to target the payers - those who will pay out-of-pocket for premium or simplified services. From elective surgery providers to online health communities and retail care clinics, these offerings bypass the hospital provider and insurer financial model. The one exception is retail care clinics, wherein, some insurers cover most costs of a visit (<$100). These companies get it. They reject the inelastic economics of delivering innovative care through the hospital system and insurance conundrum, replete with regulatory, reimbursement, and policy challenges. Jeff C. Goldsmith's, Digital Medicine: Implications for Healthcare Leaders, examines payer-centric business models of the future and how they will become commonplace.

The Edge of Medicine induces hope for recipients of life saving and enhancing technologies. However, this is a standard that not all American's will realize, except for what is delivered in emergency rooms of the nation.

Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human

Digital Medicine: Implications for Healthcare Leaders (Management Series (Ann Arbor, Mich.).)

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A future definitely worth striving for, December 6, 2008

By 

Dr. Lee D. Carlson (Baltimore, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Edge of Medicine: The Technology That Will Change Our Lives (Hardcover)

There is nothing in the twenty-first century that is uninteresting, and after finishing this book the opinion that this is the best time to be alive is reinforced. The advances in medicine that were predicted to occur just a decade ago have proven to be a gross underestimate, as this book clearly shows. Its author is a physician, and also has the virtue of being a technophiliac, but the best part of his writing is his frankness in assessing some of the issues in modern medicine. Treatment modalities, surgical techniques, diagnostics, and prognostics are now more than ever being done with the assistance of technology, some of this technology being highly sophisticated and intelligent.

Genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience, robotic surgery: these are some of the tools of twenty-first century medicine. The author details the use of some of them in the book, and it is amazing to think of just a short time ago they were viewed as purely science fiction. In fact what is being done now and in a few years makes the Hollywood imagination seem sophomoric by comparison.

The author though also goes beyond a mere reporting of technological facts, for he exposes some of the finagling and politics in hospitals in the United States. One example that particularly stands out is his opinion on the "successful" hospital, these being characterized by their collection of "certificates of excellence." They acquire these by what he refers to as the "parasitic" certifying organizations that arbitrarily define novel measures of excellence, and proceed to convince hospitals, through marketing or regulatory pressure, to conform to the artificial standards that they have created. This is a story that is repeated in other professions also, where "certifying" organizations survive only by false pretenses, by asserting that quality exists in a particular business without any justification as to why their measure of quality is better than others.

For those readers such as this reviewer that are not in the medical profession but have worked as analysts or developers perfecting some of the technology that is used by physicians, the author gives some very interesting anecdotes on everyday practice, particularly in surgery rooms. Some of what the author reports can rattle the unsuspecting reader. Indeed, it many instances it is very disconcerting to discover to what degree the surgery room and its personnel are "on the edge."

One can only imagine what things will be like in medicine a decade from now, due mostly in part to technological advances. But cognizance must also be made, and the author of this book does so, to the rising costs of healthcare. Regulatory and governmental agencies will no doubt result in challenging tradeoff issues in the years to come. But with personalized genomic medicine, automated surgery, networked diagnostics, and more data transparency it is likely that the future of medicine will be an exciting one, and one that every living individual hopefully will be participating in.