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Modern medicine is designed for groups. The interactions of drugs, patients, and diseases are unpredictable—clinical trials are population based and do not account for personal idiosyncrasies, much less medical histories. In The Creative Destruction of Medicine, pioneering geneticist and cardiologist Eric Topol gives us a glimpse of the future through introducing a radical new approach—by bringing the era of big data to the clinic, laboratory, and hospital. With personal technology, doctors can see a full, continuously updated picture of each patient and treat each individually. Powerful new tools can sequence one’s genome to predict the effects of any drugs, and improved imaging and printing technology are beginning to enable us to print organs on demand. We can force medicine to undergo its biggest shakeup in history. This book shows us the stakes—and how to win them.
Eric Topol, M.D. is professor of genomics and holds the Scripps endowed chair in innovative medicine. He is the director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, California. Previously, he led the Cleveland Clinic to its #1 ranking in heart care, started a new medical school, and led key discoveries in heart disease. He lives with his family in La Jolla, California.
More information about Dr. Topol can be found at The Founders page, or at the Leigh Bureau Speakers. Dr. Topol is also frequently posts to his Twitter feed.
More information about the Creative Destuction of Medicine can be found at the book’s official website. The book is available for purchase in both physical and digital versions.
“The Creative Destruction of Medicine… is a venture capitalist’s delight…. [The book’s] most important contributions are in portraying how medical innovation will coalesce to change clinical practice and what the coming changes mean for today’s policy debates….”
— Wall Street Journal
“Topol does an excellent job of explaining all, and his enthusiasm for the possibilities of what the future holds is infectious. It can only be hoped, as the convergence he so convincingly predicts materializes, that the barriers erected by the gatekeepers of yesterday’s paradigms will be easily dismantled so as not to impede the benefits it promises.”
— Boston Globe
“An eye opening account of why conventional medicine is doomed…. [C]ompelling stuff…. [T]he book provides an excellent summary of the current state of medical genetics and how fast it is progressing, with examples that may surprise even those working in medicine.”
— New Scientist
“Topol proposes nothing less than the ‘creative destruction’ of medicine as it is currently practiced, replacing it with a brave new world in which interconnected technologies dramatically improve patient outcomes…. [T]he book is an enjoyable, high-level review of the current state of the field, intended for a general audience but referenced for those inclined to read more deeply. With its rich discussion of science and technology and companies specific to the last couple of years, this book certainly has contemporary relevance.”
— Nature Genetics
“[A] prescient view of the near future of medicine…. Every patient should read this book in order to understand the rapidly evolving role in they play in their own care…. The Creative Destruction of Medicine is a call to action for doctors and patients alike. We must see our world and our job as doctor and patient very differently. In a profession so uncertain of its future, we need precisely the vision and critical dialog offered here…. I suspect that 150 years from now when historians are looking back at the most dramatic flexion point in medicine’s history they’ll reference this book as one of the first to identify the start of medicine’s creative destruction.”
—Bryan Vartabedian, MD, 33 Charts.com