A small group of us have applied to present a talk titled "The past, present, and future models of the abstract components of health care" at the Chalke Farm History festival which takes place in June next year.
Modern medicine is often at odds with traditional knowledge and culture. Modern medicine consists of the drugs, devices, and medical and surgical procedures used in medical care, and the organizational and supportive systems within which such care is provided,’ (US Congress 1982) including diagnostic, preventive, therapeutic, rehabilitative, organizational, information, educational, and supportive technologies. Sir William Osler (1849–1919), captured this philosophy, writing that “it is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has."
Maybe traditional medicine and modern medicine need to learn to live and evolve together, balancing the two, and keeping the foundations of the past while adapting to the demands of the future. Culture can eat technology, and technology can eat technology. Intelligence, critical thinking, data, knowledge, and information were traditionally provided by communities, families, doctors and nurses…but with digital, IT, and radio technology, this is changing very, very, quickly.
There are two facets to health care. The physical facet is modelled by matter and energy, time, and space. The abstract facet is modelled by information, intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, and data - generic representations in the brain or machines of perceptions and abstractions – and critical thinking. Knowledge and medical culture evolve, emerge and submerge at different times and locations in history.
The knowledge of traditional health care culture is the sum total of the knowledge, skills and practices based on the theories, beliefs and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health, as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illnesses. A basic feature of traditional knowledge – including traditional medicine – is that it is part of the cultural traditions of communities.
Charlotte Blease has described an extra facet of healthcare – “Dr Bot” (Yale University Press) - a future model of healthcare. Over 1.5 million scientific articles on biomedicine and life sciences are now published and collected in the PubMed database every year. Intelligence plays a central role in the transformation of data and information into matter, time, space, and energy, and transforming matter, time, space, and energy into information, knowledge, wisdom, and data.
HIFA profile: Richard Fitton is a retired family doctor - GP. Professional interests: Health literacy, patient partnership of trust and implementation of healthcare with professionals, family and public involvement in the prevention of modern lifestyle diseases, patients using access to professional records to overcome confidentiality barriers to care, patients as part of the policing of the use of their patient data Email address: richardpeterfitton7 AT gmail.com