Table of Contents
Advance Praise for
THE CREATIVE DESTRUCTION OF MEDICINE
If we keep practicing medicine as we know it today, healthcare will become an unbearable burden on all modern societies in a very near future. We are in a real race between healthcare innovation that can change this worrisome trend and the resistance to change inherent to our healthcare system. In a comprehensive, well-researched and thoughtful tour de force, Eric Topol, always a clear and uncompromising thought leader of his generation, challenges us to think about the revolutionary potential of a world where information no longer belongs to a few and where information can be automatically collected from the many to greatly improve healthcare for all. This is a must read!
Elias Zerhouni, M.D., President Global R&D Sanofi and
former director US National Institutes of Health
What happens when the super-convergence of smart phones further combines with million-fold lower-cost genomics and diverse wearable sensors? The riveting answer leads compellingly to call to activismnot only for medical care providers, but all patients and everyone looking for the next disruptive economic revolution. This future is closer than most of us would have imagined before seeing it laid out so clearly. A must-read.
George Church, Ph.D., Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School,
Director of the Center for Computational Genetics
Eric Topol provides an excellent and pragmatic view of the US Healthcare system from a patients perspective. He then offers, through numerous examples, an exciting vision for the future... when technology can be used to dramatically improve the quality of care and reduce cost at the same time. Creative Destruction is a highly informative and enjoyable book, which truly triggers the readers imagination as to what is possible.
Omar Ishrak, Chairman and CEO of Medtronic
Eric Topol is the perfect author for this book. He has a unique understanding of both genomics and wireless medicine and has a remarkable track record as a charismatic pioneer, visionary, and change agent in medicine. Im sure this book will reach a very large number of people with information that can both empower and help transform their lives for the better.
Dean Ornish, M.D., Founder and President,
Preventive Medicine Research Institute, and author of The Spectrum
Eric Topol outlines the creative destruction of medicine that must be led by informed consumers. Smart patients will push the many stakeholders in health to accelerate change as medicine adapts to a new world of information and technology.
Mehmet Oz, M.D., Professor and Vice-Chair of Surgery,
NY Presbyterian/Columbia University, author of many You books, Dr. Oz Show
In an upbeat, comprehensive volume, Dr. Topol has woven the prevailing technological undercurrents of the post-PC world; its power of many; its Gucci of gadgets; its cloud ecosystem; its Arab Spring of apps; and its ubiquitous, calm computing; with the disruptive innovations of biomedicine, to create a compelling account of how this bio-digital transformation will hasten personalization of the highest quality of medical care.
Eric Silfen, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, Philips Healthcare
Eric Topol has written an extraordinarily important book at just the right moment. Drawing upon a unique and impressive array of convergent expertise in medical research, clinical medicine, consumer and health technological advancements, and health policy, Dr. Topol opens the door for an essential discussion of old challenges viewed through an innovative lens. In the context of increasingly unaffordable health care costs, suboptimal quality of care delivery, a tsunami of preventable chronic illness, and new accountabilities for consumer health choices and behaviors, this book helps all of us to think about solutions in new and exciting ways!
Reed Tuckson, M.D. Executive Vice President and
Chief of Medical Affairs, UnitedHealth Group
Dr. Topol is the top thought leader in medicine today, with exceptional vision for how its future can be rebooted. This book will create and catalyze a movement for the individualization and democratization of medicineand undoubtedly promote better health care.
Greg Lucier, CEO, Life Technologies
Eric Topol offers a new and intriguing perspective on how the intersections of medicine and technology could further transform the delivery of healthcare and the role of a patient. He advocates for a future world of medicine where informed consumers are in the driver seat and control their own healthcare based on genomic information and real-time data obtained through nanosensors and wireless technology.
John Martin, Ph.D. Chairman and CEO, Gilead Sciences
Eric Topol is that rare physician willing to challenge the orthodoxies of his guild. He recognizes that in the US health care business-as-usual is unsustainable. But he does not despair. He bears witness to the rise of Homo digitus and the promise it holds to upend the inefficiencies and dysfunction so entrenched in clinical medicine. The Creative Destruction of Medicine is a timely tour de force. It is a necessary heresy.
Misha Angrist, Ph.D., Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, author of Here Is a Human Being: At the Dawn of Personal Genomics
The Creative Destruction of Medicine is an engaging look into how the discoveries in genetics and biology will change the landscape of medicine. Along the way, Dr. Topol provides a fascinating compendium of stories about the shortcomings of medicine as it is currently practiced and how the revolutionary discoveries coming since the first sequencing of the human genome a decade ago will shape the delivery of healthcare in the 21st Century.
William R. Brody, M.D., Ph.D., President,
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California
Much of the wealth created over the last decades arose out of a brutal transition from A, B, Cs to digital code. While creating some of the worlds most valuable companies, this process also upended whole industries and even countries. Now medicine, health care, and life sciences are undergoing the same transition. And, again, enormous wealth will be created and destroyed. This book is a road map of what is about to happen.
Juan Enriquez, Managing Director Excel Venture Management
and author As the Future Catches You and Homo Evolutus
Dr. Topol believes that medicine, catalyzed by extraordinary innovation that exploits digital information, is about to go through its biggest shakeup in history. In The Creative Destruction of Medicine, he calls for a jailbreak from the ideas of the past. In the next phase of medicine, powerful digital tools including mobile sensors and advanced processors will transform our understanding of the individual, enabling creative mash-ups of data that will spark entirely new discoveries and spawn ultra-personalized health and fitness solutions. And with over 6 billion mobile connections worldwide, the mobile technology platform will have a major impact on that visionleading to what Dr. Topol describes as nothing less than a reboot of the health care system. And we share Dr. Topols view that individual consumers have the opportunity, and the power, to increase the pace of the titanic change thats coming.