Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
You wake up with chest pain. Your smartphone reads your ECG. If it’s a heart attack, it calls an ambulance and sends your data ahead to the ER.
A sweeping transformation of medicine has begun that will rival in importance the introduction of anesthesia or the discovery of the germ basis of infectious disease. It will change how patients and physicians interact. It will change medical research and therapy. “Sick care”—the current model of waiting for you to get sick and then trying to alleviate symptoms and make you well—will become true “health care,” where prevention is the mantra and driving force. Welcome to the world of digital medicine.