May 1, 2013
Your Doctor, Your Smartphone,
and the Future Of Medicine
Nancy Snyderman
Chief Medical Editor, NBC Nightly News
Your Doctor, Your Smartphone,
and the Future Of Medicine
Nancy Snyderman
Chief Medical Editor, NBC Nightly News
Minutes of the 28th Meeting of the 71st Year
The 28th meeting of the Old Guard of Princeton was called to order by President Ruth Miller at 10:15 AM.
137 members were in attendance.
Tom Fulmer led the invocation.
Jack Reilly distributed proposed new members' bios, to be reviewed and voted upon at our next meeting on May 8th, Claire Jacobus, chair of the nominating committee, read the proposed slate of candidates for officers for the 2013-14 academic year. The list will be available on the web-site and voted upon at the May 8th meeting.
Multiple guests were present and were introduced by their hosts; the list is in the minutes and will be available on the web-site.
Host/Guest:
Ralph Widmer read the minutes of Dr. Jim Wei's presentation at the April 24 meeting, setting a new paradigm for mirth-eliciting minutes, which I shall not dare attempt to emulate.
Nancy Beck introduced our speaker, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, Chief Medical Editor of NBC Nightly News, in which capacity she has travelled all over the world. She is also a pediatrician and an otolaryngologist/head and neck surgeon, presently both practicing and teaching at the University of Pennsylvania.
Her topic: "Your Doctor, Your Smartphone and the Future of Medicine."
Dr. Snyderman began with three quick questions: who wants to be sick today? Who would like to spend tonight in the hospital? Who, of the men, had a PSA test and who, of the women, had a mammogram after the age of 40? The first two questions resulted in no hand up, the third a uniform show of hands!
She condemned the runaway use of technology for mass shotgun evaluation and screening.
She then introduced a video of NBC's Brian Williams, showing Dr. Snyderman interviewing Dr. Eric Topol, a renowned author and Cardiologist fascinated with technology. He demonstrated the use of his smart phone, with a special attachment permitting him have a real-time cardiogram of the patient sitting in front of him. He foresees a revolution in medicine brought on wireless sensors, including ultrasound at the bedside, using a "vscan" made by GE.
He also uses 'apps' for laboratory tests and drug information and advocates DNA testing to personalize individual health care.
Setting his own example, he walks/bikes daily and refuses to use elevators or escalators, preferring to use the staircase as additional exercise. His only weakness is "Tortilla Chips," which he loves and can't resist. Fortunately, he can monitor his blood sugar level instantly, with a sensor he wears on the skin of his abdomen, not shown in the video.
Dr. Topol decries the excess use of drugs in the US as a costly, wasteful and dangerous practice. He advocates, instead, personalized health care, using genome sequencing. Dr. Snyderman has had this performed on herself and now carries the information with her, available at the touch on her smart phone. She also wears an e-sensor, which records all the steps she takes in her hectic daily routine, giving her the assurance that she has completed her daily minimum physical requirement. She feels we could all have a "private channel" on our TV'/smart- phone, permitting direct contact with our physician and access to all our laboratory personal data. She recommends divorcing your Dr. if he/she balks at sharing your data with you.
Believing her allocated time to speak to be limited to 30 minutes, Dr. Snyderman wasted no time in plunging into a stimulating, and challenging! Q&A.
Representative samples:
Q. Will this technology diminish the need for many health care
jobs?
A. Of physicians, maybe, but not for nurses, physician assistants or home health care assistants, who will be in short supply given our aging population. She sees the future with our hospitals
exporting health care to the rest of the globe, with surgeons sitting in Pittsburgh controlling surgery through robotics in Bangladesh!
Q. How do we decrease health care costs?
A. She denies any expertise in HC economics but advocates for elimination of shotgun testing, including PSA and mammograms, and agrees that our current HC costs, as a % of GDP is unsustainable. She is excited by new technology, such as a sensor, the size of a grain of sand, injected in your blood stream, monitoring various aspects of your chemistry and alerting the individual of any significant change with a call to your smart- phone. She foresees a decreased use of CAT scans for screening which can result in chasing down shadows, with associated potential risks and major cost factors. She emphasized the important potential for genome-defining an individual-- now available through the club "23 and Me" for $99. Its membership is already approaching a million. This has a tremendous potential of specially defined cohorts with amazing value to pharmaceutical companies for clinical trials.
Q. How early in one's life would she suggest starting this monitoring?
A. ASAP and preferably in utero. But she cautioned that all this information and technology must be approached with "an abundance of caution!" She reminded us that a majority of HC costs are spent in the last year of life and that better communication of medical intervention and end of life strategies warranted individual and societal review.
The meeting ended at 11:30 AM with a well deserved round of applause.
Respectfully submitted
Charles L. Rojer, M. D.
137 members were in attendance.
Tom Fulmer led the invocation.
Jack Reilly distributed proposed new members' bios, to be reviewed and voted upon at our next meeting on May 8th, Claire Jacobus, chair of the nominating committee, read the proposed slate of candidates for officers for the 2013-14 academic year. The list will be available on the web-site and voted upon at the May 8th meeting.
Multiple guests were present and were introduced by their hosts; the list is in the minutes and will be available on the web-site.
Host/Guest:
- Claire Jacobus/ Eva Grossman
- B. F. Graham/ Margie Harper
- Tony Glockler /Bev Glockler /Jim Bagin Bee-gin
- Nancy Beck/ Barbara Lee
- Michael Curtis/ Ferris Olin
- Larry Parsons/ Roger Pine
- Scott McVay/ Hella McVay
- Lanny Jones/ Elizabeth Christopherson
- Ev Pinneo/ Kay Pinneo
- Charles Rojer/ Reba Orzaq
Ralph Widmer read the minutes of Dr. Jim Wei's presentation at the April 24 meeting, setting a new paradigm for mirth-eliciting minutes, which I shall not dare attempt to emulate.
Nancy Beck introduced our speaker, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, Chief Medical Editor of NBC Nightly News, in which capacity she has travelled all over the world. She is also a pediatrician and an otolaryngologist/head and neck surgeon, presently both practicing and teaching at the University of Pennsylvania.
Her topic: "Your Doctor, Your Smartphone and the Future of Medicine."
Dr. Snyderman began with three quick questions: who wants to be sick today? Who would like to spend tonight in the hospital? Who, of the men, had a PSA test and who, of the women, had a mammogram after the age of 40? The first two questions resulted in no hand up, the third a uniform show of hands!
She condemned the runaway use of technology for mass shotgun evaluation and screening.
She then introduced a video of NBC's Brian Williams, showing Dr. Snyderman interviewing Dr. Eric Topol, a renowned author and Cardiologist fascinated with technology. He demonstrated the use of his smart phone, with a special attachment permitting him have a real-time cardiogram of the patient sitting in front of him. He foresees a revolution in medicine brought on wireless sensors, including ultrasound at the bedside, using a "vscan" made by GE.
He also uses 'apps' for laboratory tests and drug information and advocates DNA testing to personalize individual health care.
Setting his own example, he walks/bikes daily and refuses to use elevators or escalators, preferring to use the staircase as additional exercise. His only weakness is "Tortilla Chips," which he loves and can't resist. Fortunately, he can monitor his blood sugar level instantly, with a sensor he wears on the skin of his abdomen, not shown in the video.
Dr. Topol decries the excess use of drugs in the US as a costly, wasteful and dangerous practice. He advocates, instead, personalized health care, using genome sequencing. Dr. Snyderman has had this performed on herself and now carries the information with her, available at the touch on her smart phone. She also wears an e-sensor, which records all the steps she takes in her hectic daily routine, giving her the assurance that she has completed her daily minimum physical requirement. She feels we could all have a "private channel" on our TV'/smart- phone, permitting direct contact with our physician and access to all our laboratory personal data. She recommends divorcing your Dr. if he/she balks at sharing your data with you.
Believing her allocated time to speak to be limited to 30 minutes, Dr. Snyderman wasted no time in plunging into a stimulating, and challenging! Q&A.
Representative samples:
Q. Will this technology diminish the need for many health care
jobs?
A. Of physicians, maybe, but not for nurses, physician assistants or home health care assistants, who will be in short supply given our aging population. She sees the future with our hospitals
exporting health care to the rest of the globe, with surgeons sitting in Pittsburgh controlling surgery through robotics in Bangladesh!
Q. How do we decrease health care costs?
A. She denies any expertise in HC economics but advocates for elimination of shotgun testing, including PSA and mammograms, and agrees that our current HC costs, as a % of GDP is unsustainable. She is excited by new technology, such as a sensor, the size of a grain of sand, injected in your blood stream, monitoring various aspects of your chemistry and alerting the individual of any significant change with a call to your smart- phone. She foresees a decreased use of CAT scans for screening which can result in chasing down shadows, with associated potential risks and major cost factors. She emphasized the important potential for genome-defining an individual-- now available through the club "23 and Me" for $99. Its membership is already approaching a million. This has a tremendous potential of specially defined cohorts with amazing value to pharmaceutical companies for clinical trials.
Q. How early in one's life would she suggest starting this monitoring?
A. ASAP and preferably in utero. But she cautioned that all this information and technology must be approached with "an abundance of caution!" She reminded us that a majority of HC costs are spent in the last year of life and that better communication of medical intervention and end of life strategies warranted individual and societal review.
The meeting ended at 11:30 AM with a well deserved round of applause.
Respectfully submitted
Charles L. Rojer, M. D.