From the Bedside to the Desktop: How Risk is Remaking Medicine

Jason Karlawish, MDProfessor of Medicine, Medical Ethics and Health PolicyPerelman School of MedicineUniversity of PennsylvaniaLunch provided at NOONTalk begins at 12:10 PMFor much of the modern era, medicine worked at the bedside. ¿Go to the bedside¿ was a senior physician¿s command to trainees, a command indicating where to discover, diagnose, and treat disease. The patient¿s chief complaint and the detailed history and physical that followed were the foundation of the medical encounter and medical knowledge. But today medicine occupies a new space. Physicians discover diseases and diagnose and treat patients at the ¿desktop.¿ Desktop medicine describes how risk assessment and information technologies are transforming medicine. The desktop with a networked computer¿and that computer with its own virtual desktop¿are where researchers examine and discover risks and where clinicians and patients meet to assess a patient¿s risk factors and decide whether the patient needs treatment. This talk will consider this new model of medicine and its broad implications for medical training, the doctor-patient relationship, and the practice of medicine.