The growth of medical knowledge is incredible. Doctors face the impossible task of knowing what’s the latest and greatest standard of care. I think that in Atul Gawande’s Ted talk, he summed up the challenge really well:
“We have now found treatments for nearly all of the tens of thousands of conditions that a human being can have…We’ve now discovered 4000 medical and surgical procedures. We’ve discovered 6000 drugs that I’m now licensed to prescribe.”
“As Doctors, we can’t know it all. We can’t do it all by ourselves.”
I don’t want those reading this to get the wrong impression. Many doctors I know have done literally super human things for patients and they are a font of incredible knowledge across so many things. The problem is that the brain, as phenomenal as it is, just can’t keep up with the pace of medicine. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s just a situation where technology can be used to help.
While there are a variety of opportunities available to help doctors overcome this challenge, I’m really excited about the potential benefits of sharing medical experience and knowledge across hospital systems. The few examples I’ve seen of this are usually specialty specific platforms that help doctors from that specialty share and discuss challenging cases and findings with other specialists.
It’s such a powerful concept, but many organizations are resistant to sharing. Many see their internal expertise and findings as an asset to the organization. They are true that it is a valuable asset, but what they don’t realize is that the collective knowledge that they could receive from the larger medical community is of much greater value.
I hope we’ll see more and more projects, initiatives and platforms that facilitate this kind of knowledge sharing. It’s the best thing for the patients, the healthcare system, and the organizations that take part. Plus, technology makes it so easy to do so, it’s a real shame when it doesn’t happen.