A revolution in healthcare is coming
Welcome to Doctor You
Feb 1st 2018
NO WONDER they are called “patients”.When people enter the health-care systems of rich countries today, they know what they will get: prodding doctors, endless tests,?baffling jargon, rising costs and, above all, long waits. Some?stoicism?will always be needed, because health care is complex and diligence matters. But frustration is boiling over.This week three of the biggest names in American business—Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase—announced a new venture to provide better, cheaper health care for their employees. A fundamental problem with today’s system is that patients lack knowledge and control.?Access to data can bestow both.
The internet already enables patients to seek online consultations when and where it suits them. You can take over-the-counter tests to analyse your blood,?sequence your genome?and check on the bacteria in your gut. Yet radical change demands a shift in emphasis, from providers to patients and from doctors to data. That shift is happening. Technologies such as the smartphone allow people to monitor their own health. The possibilities multiply when you add the crucial missing ingredients—access to your own medical records and the ability easily to share information with those you trust. That allows you to reduce inefficiencies in your own treatment and also to provide data to help train medical algorithms. You can enhance your own care and everyone else’s, too.
jargon: the language used for a particular activity or by a particular group of people
stoicism: the quality or behavior of a person who accepts what happens without complaining or showing emotion
現在病人走進一家醫院，都能預料到會是什么樣的：倉促的醫生，數不清的檢測，看不懂的病例，漲不停的費用和無盡的等待... 病人的問題就是他們不清楚狀況和缺乏對自己病情的控制
所以亞馬遜和JPMorgan還有Berkshire Hathaway 成立了一個新的公司，為他們的員工提供更好更廉價的醫療
The doctor will be you now
Medical data may not seem like the type of kindling to spark a revolution.?But the flow of information is likely to bear fruit in several ways. One is?better diagnosis.?Someone worried about their heart can now buy a watch strap containing a medical-grade monitor that will detect arrhythmias. Apps are vying to see if they can diagnose everything from skin cancer and concussion to Parkinson’s disease. Research is under way to see whether sweat can be analysed for molecular biomarkers without the need for an invasive blood test. Some think that changes in how quickly a person swipes a phone’s touchscreen might signal the onset of cognitive problems.
A second benefit?lies in the management of complex diseases. Diabetes apps can change the way patients cope, by monitoring blood-glucose levels and food intake, potentially reducing long-run harm such as blindness and gangrene. Akili Interactive, a startup, plans to seek regulatory approval for a video game designed to stimulate an area of the brain implicated in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (see article).
醫療數據可能不會帶來一個偉大的變革，但是會有非常多的好處，這四段分別講了四個有用的地方，看經濟學人重要的是看清楚文章的邏輯！
第一個好處是：更好地診斷
第二個好處是：管理復雜的疾病
Patients can also?improve the efficiency of their care.?Although health records are increasingly electronic, they are often still trapped in silos. Many contain data that machines cannot read. This can lead to delays in treatment, or worse. Many of the 250,000 deaths in America attributable to medical error each year can be traced to poorly co-ordinated care. With data at their fingertips, common standards to enable sharing and a strong incentive to get things right, patients are more likely to spot errors. On January 24th Apple laid out its plans to ask organisations to let patients use their smartphones to download their own medical records (see article).
A final benefit of?putting patients in charge stems from the generation and aggregation of their data. Artificial intelligence (AI) is already being trained by a unit of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to identify cancerous tissues and retinal damage. As patients’data stream from smartphones and “wearables”, they will teach AIs to do ever more. Future AIs could, for instance, provide automated medical diagnosis from a description of your symptoms, spot behavioural traits that suggest you are depressed or identify if you are at special risk of cardiac disease. The aggregation of data will also make it easier for you to find other people with similar diseases and to see how they responded to various treatments.
第三個好處是提高醫療效率
第四個好處是病人掌控自己的數據整合等
講完了好處接下來講壞處...
An Apple a day
As with all new technologies,?pitfalls?accompany the promise. Hucksters will launch apps that do not work. But with regulators demanding oversight of apps that present risks to patients, users will harm only their wallets. Not everyone will want to take active control of their own health care; plenty will want the professionals to manage everything.Fine. Data can be?pored?over by those who are interested, while those who are not can opt to share data automatically with trusted providers.
The benefits of new technologies often?flow disproportionately to the rich.?Those fears are mitigated by the incentives that employers, governments and insurers have to invest in cost-efficient preventive care for all. Alphabet has recently launched a firm called Cityblock Health, for example, which plans to?trawl?through patients’ data to provide better care for low-income city dwellers, many of them covered by Medicaid, an insurance programme for poorer Americans.
pitfall: a danger or problem that is hidden or not obvious at first
pore over: to read or study something very carefully
trawl: to search through something in order to find someone or something
很多先進的技術都是益了富人，因此這需要納稅人，政府和保險公司一起想出保障到所有人的醫療制度
Google在這方面有做出了努力，成立了一各公司Cityblock Health，為低收入人群提供更好的醫療！（真心覺得googlers 是為了人類進步而發展的公司...)
Other risks are harder to deal with.Greater transparency may encourage the?hale and hearty?not to take out health insurance. They may even make it harder for the unwell to find cover. Regulations can slow that process—by requiring insurers to ignore genetic data, for example—but not stop it. Security is another worry. The more patient data are analysed in the cloud or shared with different firms, the greater the potential threat of hacking or misuse. Almost a quarter of all?data breaches?in America happen in health care. Health firms should face?stringent?penalties if they are?slapdash?about security, but it is naive to expect that breaches will never happen.
Will the benefits of making data more widely available outweigh such risks??The signs are that they will. Plenty of countries are now opening up their medical records, but few have gone as far as Sweden. It aims to give all its citizens electronic access to their medical records by 2020; over a third of Swedes have already set up accounts. Studies show that patients with such access have a better understanding of their illnesses, and that their treatment is more successful. Trials in America and Canada have produced not just happier patients but lower costs, as clinicians fielded fewer inquiries. That should be no surprise. No one has a greater interest in your health than you do. Trust in Doctor You.
hale: healthy and strong, usually used in the phrase hale and hearty?
一個壞處就是讓那些身體情況良好的人不會再買保險，而讓那些身體不好的人很難買到保險；還有分享的數據越多，就越有可能發生數據泄露和被黑客黑的可能
stringent: very strict or severe
slapdash: quick and careless
那分享這些醫療數據到底是不是利大于弊還是弊大于利？種種跡象標明是 利大于弊的！
總結：科技改變生活，本文是這期經濟學人雜志的封面文章
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Results
Lexile?Measure: 1100L - 1200L
Mean Sentence Length: 16.04
Mean Log Word Frequency: 3.16
Word Count: 1030
這篇文章的藍思值是在1100-1200L， 適合英語專業大二的水平學習，是經濟學人里比較簡單的
使用kindle斷斷續續地讀《經濟學人》三年，發現從一開始磕磕碰碰到現在比較順暢地讀完，進步很大，推薦購買！點擊這里可以去亞馬遜官網購買~
