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The future of medicine is almost here
On a train ride back from visiting my parents, I had a conversation with an interesting fellow.
Ron was a church-going man who spent his life helping the homeless and was traveling from upstate New York to Maryland to get a medical diagnosis. He was having what was known as “Leaky Gut syndrome” and needed to get surgery, but had a J-pouch (colonoscopy bag), which came with an increased risk of infection.
And he seemed kind of miserable on the train. A bumpy train is not the most comfortable ride, but imagine having to empty and clean medical equipment in a train bathroom, along with monitoring your vitals. Add that to winter weather delays, and he was most likely suffering.
But he had to go there: there were only two hospitals in the US that had the expertise to perform those operations with those complications. Except, in a few years, he might not.
There’s an amazing medical technology called telemedicine that would allow him to get that same sort of diagnosis done remotely at a local hospital without having to journey so far. And that future is almost here, thanks in part to your Netflix habit.
