Guest Post from Arlen Meyers
Medicine has transitioned from high touch to high tech to low trust. The explosion of post COVID technology “innovations” is leaving a wake of skepticism from the healing class.
As noted, Covid-19 let virtual medicine out of the bottle. Now it’s time to tame it. If we don’t, there is a danger that it will stealthily become a mainstay of our medical care. Deploying it too widely or too quickly risks poorer care, inequities and even more outrageous charges in a system already infamous for big bills.
Medical technoscepticism is driven by:
- Unresolved conflicts between the ethics of medicine and the ethics of business
- False promises and marketing hype
- Resistance to change
- Faulty thinking leading to technology adoption errors
- The halo from BIG TECH shenanigans and the resulting distrust
- Social media misinformation and infodemics
- Not addressing the needs of end user healthcare professionals and what they value
- Rules, legislation and administrative mandates and that interfere with dissemination and implementation and the resulting unintended consequences
- Inequitable access and lack of clinical validation to solutions
- Inadequate professional and patient education and training about present and future medical technologies and their value
- Fear about artificial intelligence and its effect on society
- Security, privacy and confidentiality concerns
The pandemic resulted in an increase in virtual care. But its place and value in the post-pandemic world is up in the air. To help policymakers, payers, providers assess the various ways in which virtual care programs could have a positive impact for patients, clinicians, payers, and society going forward, the American Medical Association and Manatt Health developed a framework. It can be used by care providers to develop and evaluate new digitally-enabled-care models, by payers to inform coverage and payment decisions, and by policymakers to establish regulations.
Much like addressing vaccine skepticism, technoskepticism will require a multipronged approach. . Maybe you should just take all those worthless vitamins and supplements and forget about all the technology snake oil.
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