Newsletter

Knowledge and Improvement2024-04-15

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Friedrich Nietzsche

In medicine, who benefits from knowledge of (hidden) risks of medical disorders? With progress in biological testing, imaging, quantitative data gathering, and AI analyses, it is possible to identify risk of disorders early on. Is that always a good thing?

Individuals may want to know, if the results are actionable and lead to better treatments and prevention. The tests and treatments have to be accessible easily, well tolerated, and affordable by them.

Clinicians want to know if the testing results are easy to interpret, improve their clinical acumen, and do not add more liability or administrative burdens on them.

Payors want to know if the testing results reduce healthcare costs per covered individual in the short term, not just the long term.

Governments want to know if the results can inform policy changes that lead to a healthier, happier, more productive population.

As such, the conceptual intelligence (iQ) and execution intelligence (xQ) of technological progress has to be coupled with the emotional intelligence (eQ) of understanding how it can benefit different stakeholders, and molded in a way that makes it palatable, useful, and actually used.