Practicing Medicine In The Year 2050

Our future patients may need vaccines and antivirus software.

For those who have not seen or heard of the documentary, Transcendent Man, it is a film that chronicles the life and work of author, inventor, and futurist Ray Kurzweil. The film is at once fascinating and uncomfortable. It makes The Matrix look like a prophecy the will soon become reality. In another 40 years, according to Kurzweil, you may be presented with the same desicion as Neo, swallow the red pill and end up downloading kung fu. He firmly believes that in the next 40-50 years humans will merge with machines, and artificial intelligence will become self aware. So if you are sick of trying to remember intimate details of purine metabolism, forget it, just download the software update. The reason we will need to enhance our brains is simple. Technology will eventually hit a point referred to as “the singularity”  where improvements will be made so fast that the normal human brain will not be able to keep up without plugging into the matrix, so to speak.

This movie also explores the future of medicine. Doctors will have machines the size of red blood cells armed with one thousand times the computing power of my mac. These little cyborgs will go cruising through our vasculature diagnosing and treating disease as they float along. Really, it's unfortunate we have to wait for them because if I have to get pimped on nephrotic membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis one more time, I think I might loose it.

I guess no can say for sure what the field of medicine will look like in even 20 years; but one thing is for certain, it will have many changes. In fact, medicine is likely to change more in the next 20 years than it has in the last 100, which is both a frightening and exciting thought. For the physicians of the next generation, memorizing and mastering the current treatments and practices will not be enough. The next wave of great doctors will be creative thinkers, innovators, and those who are most able to embrace and navigate change. All that said, I might still wait a few years before I start downing pills offered to me by some random large black man in a leather coat.

Comments

[Arlen Meyers MD MBA]

Here's what I would say to students interested in medicine:
1. Like anything else, follow your heart, not your parents
2. There are lots of ways to make a difference with an MD degree other than seeing patients
3. You will need to get your ticket punched (MD degree, residency) to do most of them
4. Don't tell the admissions officer at the medical school that you have no interest in practicing medicine.
5. Hear all the people who are bitching. Just don't listen to them.
6. Don't be a slave to debt if possible. Sacrifice and pay it off as soon as possible
7. Taking care of business is a part of taking care of patients. Start learning it as soon as possible on your own because you won't learn it in medical school
8. Innovate
9. Innovate
10. Innovate

[Justin Weaver]

Great advice! Thank you for the input! I will definitely keep this "Top 10 List" with me as I continue my journey.