It’s Time For The Rise of E-Physicians

We strongly believe that only digital health can bring healthcare into the 21st century and make patients the point-of-care. Patient empowerment, the spread of digital technologies and the widening access to medical information coupled with global doctor shortages, rising life expectancy and the ever-higher numbers of chronic diseases call for a change in the practice of medicine. The centuries-old approach to the medical profession cannot deal with the waves of the 21st century. Physicians should experience a shift from the lone wolf to the curious team player, from the rule follower to the creative and from the demigod to the guide in the jungle of digital health. That’s the main argument of the latest publication of The Medical Futurist Institute entitled The Rise of the Empowered Physician in the Digital Health Era published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Atlases holding up an increasingly heavier, ancient world The level of physician burnout is at an all-time high. The President of the World Medical Association, Dr. Leonid Eidelman, started his inauguration speech in October 2018 with addressing the “pandemic of physician burnout”. At that moment, nearly half of the world’s 10 million physicians had symptoms of burnout, including emotional exhaustion, interpersonal disengagement, and a low sense of personal accomplishment, he explained.

The growing number of chronic diseases, global doctor shortages, increasing costs of medical treatment, and rising life expectancy all together result in an immense challenge for medical professionals. Moreover, even innovations that are supposed to help physicians cope with the burden tend to cost in more working hours: electronic medical records, the increasing computerization of the practice coupled with the increase of bureaucratic tasks all add to the burnout epidemic.

So far it seems technology offered more benefits to patients than medical professionals. Patients have more information at their fingertips, have access to many more technologies, smartphone apps, and gadgets aiding their healing process. They can follow their care closely, ask questions, turn to online patient communities for support, go after treatments in foreign countries, etc. It seems that they don’t need the too confident demigod-like physicians of the past anymore. They need partners who can navigate them through the jungle of digital health.