Review by Choice Review
This is the third book by physician Topol (Scripps Research) describing how digital technology will shape the future of medicine. Deep Medicine expands on Topol's earlier work to show how the combination of immense sets of data and artificial intelligence is beginning to revolutionize health care in nearly all fields, from radiology to psychiatry. In some cases, artificial intelligence based on complex algorithms can now diagnose disease more accurately than experienced physicians can. Topol acknowledges dangers to privacy and other disruptive implications of artificial intelligence, but he argues for a symbiotic relationship between humans and technology leading to better health care for patients and more rewarding careers for physicians. Used wisely, artificial intelligence can free physicians from highly repetitive and tedious tasks, allowing more time to interact with patients on a human level. Empathy and human-to-human contact are the traditional hallmarks of health care that have been lost in "shallow medicine," in which physicians spend more time completing electronic health records than listening to their patients. Reviewing medical research and relating compelling anecdotes, Topol makes a strong case that greater reliance on digital technology can increase opportunities for more humane health care. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Joel B. Hagen, Radford University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Topol, a cardiologist and the founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, flips the idea of medical robots on its head. Many of today's human doctors - crunched for time, rushing to optimize billing and type up records while talking with their patients - are short on empathy and connection, and as a result their bedside manner can often be robotic. Topol begins with the story of his own knee replacement surgery, which, because of a condition neither he nor his doctor knew he had, resulted in terrible inflammation, scarring and pain; his orthopedist told him, essentially, to walk it off. A physical therapist chucked the standard protocol for a gentler approach and "rescued" him. Topol's argument isn't that human doctors should or will be replaced by A.I., but that there are different fields and tasks within medicine that are best approached by one or the other, or the two working together. He envisions a future where doctors and machines work symbiotically, with computers doing what they do best: identifying patterns in scans, reading vast amounts of genomic data to predict health outcomes, using information about the microbiome to offer personalized nutrition advice, listening to voice commands during patient visits so that doctors can create medical records without being tethered to a keyboard. This will free doctors to focus on the human-to-human interactions that machines, no matter how sophisticated, will never be able to duplicate: contextualizing a prognosis, determining which scan or test is most appropriate, offering emotional support to patients and their family members. As it proceeds through the various applications of A.I., from radiology to dermatology to entire health care systems, "Deep Medicine" can sometimes feel a bit dry. Topol writes most effectively from his perspective as a physician, detailing actual cases and extending his caretaking sensibility to the reader. At one point he offers a full page of straightforward patient advocacy, an aside that reads like advice from a wise and concerned family doctor, ft's a list of reasons you should control - not merely have access to - your medical data, "ft's your body" and "you paid for it" top the list, and Topol proceeds through all kinds of practical reasons down to the last one: "ft could save your life."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 12, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
In The Patient Will See You Now (2016) and The Creative Destruction of Medicine (2013), cardiologist and innovative-medicine professor Topol pulled few punches in criticizing the inhumane and error-prone state of present-day doctor-patient relationships. His latest work offers a way through the impasse with an unlikely futuristic tool: artificial intelligence (AI). Topol acknowledges up front that computer technology often hinders as much it helps in medical treatment, touching on the downsides of electronic health records and insurance-driven software. He also highlights modern medicine's many flaws, such as the missed diagnoses and runaway costs which demand new solutions, then launches into his theory for how AI has enormous potential to provide them. A quick overview of AI's role in cell phones and self-driving cars gives way to an almost breathtaking preview of how AI combined with deep learning, or multiple-patient tracking methods, will allow faster evaluations and individualized treatment plans, even as Topol concedes the dangers of data hacking. An optimistic vision of medicine's rapidly approaching future that should be required reading for the public and medical people alike.--Carl Hays Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Cardiologist Topol (The Patient Will See You Now) looks at how the use of artificial intelligence is changing medicine in a sometimes challenging but enlightening treatise. Central to his discussion is the conviction that the practice of medicine is in need of a paradigm shift toward doctors being better equipped to understand and empathize with their patients. Arguing that artificial intelligence could help achieve this goal, Topol explains how AI is already used in various medical specialties. He underscores its effectiveness in pattern reading, the major task of pathologists, radiologists, and dermatologists, as well as less developed uses in the mental health and surgical fields. These descriptions are amply supported with studies and graphs, though lay readers may find some of these difficult to understand. Topol also explores AI's potential effects on health provider systems, apps that monitor patient biometrics, and the collection of health data. He concludes with an impassioned plea for doctors to use the time freed up by AI advances to get to know their patients better as people, and not just medical conundrums. Topol's tour through AI's present and future health applications will be of greatest interest to medical professionals, but anyone with an avid curiosity about the future of medicine will find this worthwhile. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A gimlet-eyed look at the role of computers in medicine.Building on earlier fly-on-the-wall looks at modern healing (The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine Is in Your Hands, 2015, etc.), cardiologist Topol examines the pros and cons of putting artificial intelligence, database crunching, and the like into the service of doctors who may or may not appreciate the new powers gained and limits reached. In this, the question is one of building a body of testable data and using it wisely. As the author writes, "shallow evidenceleads to shallow medical practice, with plenty of misdiagnosis and unnecessary procedures." The data is more abundant than the meaning derived from itby most estimates, Topol writes, doctors have collectively absorbed perhaps 5 percent of the whole literature. AI is useful for plowing through that huge body of material and weeding out the inapplicable and unlikely. AI is not, however, yet up to the "outlandish expectations," as he puts it, that some administratorsand, more to the point, cost-cutting insurersare placing on it, from curing cancer to eliminating possible harm to patients to lessening workloads. To be sure, he notes, there are many places where an algorithm's ability to "eat data" is most welcome, as with correlating a patient's intake of fluids with his or her output of urine. Given that most Americans have their medical records scattered over many providers and insurers, it's important that data be consolidated and put in the hands of consumers. Perhaps paradoxically, notes the author, "the only way it can be made secure is to be decentralized." Another issue is the possible overreliance of doctors on data in the place of good practice, and Topol closes with the warning: "Machine medicine need not be our future."A cogent argument for a more humaneand humanmedicine, assisted by technology but not driven by it. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
