Medicine itself is sick. We hardly understand any disease and therefore need to chronically treat symptoms but not the causes. Consequently, drugs and other therapies help only very few patients; yet we are pumping more and more money into our healthcare system without any added value.Thus, the internationally renowned physician researcher, Harald Schmidt, predicts the end of medicine as we know it. On a positive note, digitization will radically change healthcare and lead to one of the greatest socioeconomic revolutions of mankind. He is one of the pioneers of ‘systems medicine’, a complete redefinition of what we actually call a ‘disease’, how we organize medicine and how we use Big Data to heal rather than treat, to prevent rather than cure. In this book the author first proves the deep crisis of medicine, but describes how medicine will become more precise, more uniform, safer and, surprisingly, also more affordable. Making a diagnosis will be taken over by artificial intelligence. Current, mainly organ-based medical specialists, disciplines and hospital departments will disappear. Physicians will become patient coaches working in interdisciplinary teams with pharmacists, physiotherapists, nutritionists, etc. and relieved of their workload. Illnesses, including cancer, will be prevented or cured in a precise manner. We will become 100 years and older. Health care spending will shift from chronic treatment of diseases to prevention and health maintenance, thereby dramatically reducing overall costs. Health will become a common good. But Harald Schmidt also warns that those who are not open to digitization will not benefit from these advances and will be left behind. Anyone who wants to benefit from the revolution of medicine must have a digital twin. Is this futurism? No, each of us can have his or her personal genome sequenced, microbiome analyzed, keep an electronic health record. The future has begun.
Schmidt convincingly explains the limitations in the current practice of medicine and the need for big data and a systems approach. Prof. Ferid Murad MD, Ph D, Nobel Laureate in Medicine 1998, USA
Network Medicine, a new discipline that offers a network-based understanding of the cell and disease, is unavoidable if we wish to translate the advances in genomics into cures. Professor Harald Schmidt, a prominent expert in this space, offers the first coherent treatment of the topic, explaining the potential of a network-based perspective of human disease. Prof. Albert-László Barabási, Northeastern University and Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
Visionary, provocative, and full of insights. Professor Schmidt gives a unique and authoritative perspective to the past, present and future of medical science and clinical practice. And all presented in such an inimitable style. Prof. Robert F.W. Moulds, MBBS Ph D FRACP, Former Dean Royal Melbourne Hospital Clinical School, Australia
Table of Content
Prologue: Many questions, no answers.- Part 1: Crisis, what crisis…?.- 1. Too Late.- 2. Don’t Rely on Your Prescription.- 3. Chronic Disease?.- 4. No Prevention.- 5. Male Plus Low Income = Double Whammy.- 6. False Incentives.- 7. The End of Big Pharma.- 8. Research Not for Patients.- 9. Organ-Based Medicine.- 10. Interjection 1: How Healthy Do You Want to Be?.-Part 2: The Medicine of the Future.- 11. Re-Discover the Whole Patient.- 12. Research for patients.- 13. Know Your Genes.- 14. Outnumbered.- 15. Your Exposome.- 16. Big Data Medicine.- 17. Healed.- 18. Well-Tech.- 19. Interjection 2: Superhumans.- Part 3: The Future has Begun….- 20. Self-diagnosis.- 21. Self-therapy.- 22. Your Digital Twin. Epilogue: Nobody Is Sick Anymore.- Appendix 1: Special Page 1.- Appendix 2: Special Page 2.
About the author
Professor Harald H.H.W. Schmidt is a German physician and pharmacist, chairing the Department of Pharmacology and Personalized Medicine, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, at the University of Maastricht. Netherlands.
After his double degree in medicine and pharmacy, he distinguished himself as an internationally highly recognized researcher in the fields of drug therapy, elucidation of the causes of disease and prevention.
He headed and heads various research programs as an Advanced Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC), coordinator of Horizon 2020 project REPO-TRIAL and Collaboration on Science and Technology (COST) actions.
He founded companies with which he brought therapeutics and diagnostics to market, is co-editor of the journal Network and Systems Medicine, and has written over 200 peer-reviewed international publications, reviews and books with a Hirsch factor of 92 and over 30, 000 citations.
Part of his early research training he conducted in the USA with the later Nobel Laureate, Ferid Murad, and led international institutes and research centers in Germany, Australia and the Netherlands. He is also the editor of a textbook on drug therapy and several expert handbooks in drug therapy.
As a broadly experience and critical analyst, he recognized the fundamental conceptual crisis in medicine and became one of the pioneers of systems medicine, i.e. a complete redefinition of what we actually call a ‘disease’, how we organize medicine and how we use Big Data to heal rather than treat and ideally to prevent diseases.
He is a dedicated, international keynote speaker, podcaster, You Tuber and initiator of the German patientenwiewir.de patient platform. One of his hobbies is sports. For a long time, he was a soccer referee. His social engagement at Rotary International and different clubs introduced him to Homeless World Cup and sharpened is awareness and engagement for homeless people. Recently, his interested in sociocritical and political contemporary art recently started him to create his own small oeuvre under the concept of realitychanges.de, which has been selected for several solo and group exhibitions
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