Powerful ideas from top nonfiction
Try Blinkist to get the key ideas from 7,000+ bestselling nonfiction titles and podcasts. Listen or read in just 15 minutes.
Start your free trial
Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
Listen to the Intro
The Patient Will See You Now summary
Eric Topol
The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands
15 mins
Brief summary
"The Patient Will See You Now" by Eric Topol explores the future of medicine and healthcare in the digital era, highlighting the potential of technology to empower patients and transform the doctor-patient relationship.
Table of Contents
The Patient Will See You Now
Summary of 7 key ideas
Audio & text in the Blinkist app
Key idea 1 of 7
Smartphones allow greater access to medical information and will soon give patients much more power to diagnose themselves.
Smartphones have revolutionized much of our lives. They provide easy access to unprecedented amounts of information with only a simple mobile connection, which is available to 95 percent of the population. They’ll no doubt have a big impact on medicine, too.
Smartphones will soon make autonomous medicine possible, that is, they’ll allow people to diagnose themselves. We already have some tools for it, such as the app SkinVision.
SkinVision allows you to send a photo of a skin lesion to a doctor, who can determine whether it’s benign or not.
And photos are just the beginning. Microscopic scans will soon have such powerful zooms that we’ll be able to scan ourselves for certain types of bacteria. Tuberculosis is diagnosed by checking a sputum sample for the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Soon, anyone with a smartphone will be able to test themselves for tuberculosis.
Smartphones also have the potential to radically change the health situation in countries where people don’t have easy access to medical professionals. In 2010, the average number of doctors and nurses per 1,000 inhabitants in sub-Saharan African countries was 1.1. In the United States, the figure was 12.3.
Mobile connections also provide people with greater access to health information. In 2013, over 630 million people in Africa had cell phones, 93 million of which were smartphones. Even non-smartphones can have an impact on public health. The South African project Masiluleke, for example, sends millions of text messages every day encouraging people to get checked for HIV/AIDS.
But, of course, smartphones are still more powerful. The biotechnology company Nanobiosym even recently unveiled Gene Radar, a tiny chip that plugs into a mobile device and can analyze a drop of blood or saliva for tuberculosis, malaria and HIV. Gene Rader will allow people to diagnose themselves for those diseases at a cost ten times cheaper than the market price today.
Want to see all full key ideas from The Patient Will See You Now?
Key ideas in The Patient Will See You Now
More knowledge in less time
Read or listen
Get the key ideas from nonfiction bestsellers in minutes, not hours.
Find your next read
Get book lists curated by experts and personalized recommendations.
Shortcasts New
We’ve teamed up with podcast creators to bring you key insights from podcasts.
What is The Patient Will See You Now about?
The medical world is on the brink of a revolution thanks to new and future technology like Big Data health maps and bacteria scanners that can attach to smartphones. Power is shifting from the doctor to the patient, and self-treatment and self-diagnoses are becoming unprecedentedly powerful. The Patient Will See You Now (2015) outlines these changes and what they mean for both you and the healthcare world.
Best quote from The Patient Will See You Now
Seventy percent of Americans would prefer virtual visits to non-virtual ones.
—Eric Topol
Who should read The Patient Will See You Now?
- Medical students
- People who suffer from a chronic disease
- Anyone curious about the future of medicine
Categories with The Patient Will See You Now
Book summaries like The Patient Will See You Now
People ❤️ Blinkist
Sven O.
It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.
Thi Viet Quynh N.
Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.
Jonathan A.
Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.
Renee D.
Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.
People also liked these summaries
4.7 Stars
Average ratings on iOS and Google Play
29 Million
Downloads on all platforms
10+ years
Experience igniting personal growth