Booster Dose
K. Ganapathy, Visiting Professor-IIT Kanpur, Professor-Tamil Nadu Dr MGR Medical University, Director-Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation & Apollo Tele Health Services
I have been reading Medical Buyer ever since its inception. The extensive up-to-date coverage gives an overview of recent developments in various diversified fields of healthcare. With diagnostic aids, imaging, laboratory medicine, and technology transforming healthcare exponentially, information about current progress in these areas is important.
However, as a neurosurgeon trained in the seventies, I wish there is an occasional article in the Medical Buyer stressing that technology is only a means to an end, and not an end by itself. The reader needs to remember that ultimately healthcare, even in 2024 (actually more so now, because of sophisticated pre-symptomatic diagnosis), requires clinical judgment and wisdom. My teachers taught me that as a doctor I need to manage the patient per se as a whole, and not treat an image or a laboratory value.
Doctors getting into the mind of the patient, empathizing, sympathizing, and catering to what the family wants are already an endangered species.