IN THE BUBBLE JOHN THACKARA - witz cultural

Wellware
Conviviality 115
Confronted by unsustainable rates of growth in expenditure, much of
the health industry is looking to automation and technology for ways to
reduce costs. Thousands of services connecting our bodies to networks are
in development. For Richard Saul Wurman, who runs an influential conference,
TedMed (Technology, Entertainment and Design, and Medicine), 9
on the subject, health care and technology are ‘‘the next convergence.’’
TedMed covers everything from computer graphics and imaging of the
human body through microlozenges that record their journey through
the body, wearables of all kinds, visualization of blood, urine, and DNA,
genomics, robotics, and nanotechnology, plus myriad information services
designed to assist people in the planning of a healthy life.
I would be foolish to argue that technology has no place in health care.
After all, as I recounted in chapter 5, modern medicine saved my daughter’s
life. If I were a paraplegic, I would welcome cyberspace as a working environment
for doing things disallowed by my body right now. The oftengrim
aftereffects of stroke—a present risk to millions of people—are being
alleviated by new technologies: If I could not properly see or hear, I don’t
doubt that sensory implants would be a godsend. 10 What I object to is not
technology in health, but the overreliance on technology to do things that
human beings can and should do better, and the false expectations raised
by special-interest groups that should—and do—know better regarding
what technology can do and what it can’t do in the realm of health care.
Communications technology and simulation are prominent in high-tech
scenarios for health. Health care industries already spend the better part of
twenty billion dollars a year on ICT, and that figure is set to soar. One of
the more extraordinary books I found during research for this book was
the 1,276-page Telemedicine Glossary. This hefty tome lists 13,500 organizations
and projects involved with health telematics; a single page lists thirty
online journals and magazines. Other pages list six hundred telemedicine
research projects with acronyms like KISS (Knowledge-Based Interactive
Signal Monitoring System), DILEMMA (Logical Engineering in General
Practice, Oncology and Shared-Care), ESTEEM (European Standardized
Telemetric Tool to Evaluate EMG Knowledge-Based), CONQUEST (Clinical
Oncology Network for Quality Standards of Treatment), WISECARE (Workflow
Information Systems for European Nursing Care), PRE-HIP (Predicting