Is radiology a doomed canary in the digital coal mine?
Many have noted that radiology has been fretting over its changing identity ever since PACS started computerizing the field en masse, but few have described the situation with more narrative flair than Robert Wachter, MD.
Chair of medicine at UC-San Francisco, author of several popular books and a founder of the hospitalist specialty—some call him its father—Wachter is getting a wide airing online for his thoughts on the imminence of radiology’s day of reckoning.
On Oct. 25, KQED Science posted a chapter on radiology from Wachter’s 2015 book The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age. Excerpt:
“Radiology’s experience over the past 15 years offers a crystal ball for the rest of the health care system. The speed with which computerization unleashed a series of forces that completely transformed an established field would be all too familiar to travel agents, journalists and others who have been run over by the digital bulldozer, but it has shocked many health care observers, even astute ones.”
Read the whole chapter:
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.