The Patient Will See You Now

The essential guide to how digital technology enables all of us to take charge of our health

“Dr. Topol’s vision is compelling, combining an empowering view of technology with the recognition that medicine requires something more.”―Wall Street Journal

A trip to the doctor is almost a guarantee of misery: you make an appointment months in advance, wait for several hours when you arrive, talk to a doctor for fifteen minutes, then wait longer for lab tests, the results of which you’ll likely never see unless they indicate more invasive tests are needed, most of which will probably prove unnecessary—and your bill will be astronomical.

In The Patient Will See You Now, Eric Topol, one of the nation’s top physicians, shows why medicine does not have to be that way. Medicine is in what Topol calls its “Gutenberg moment.” Much as the printing press took learning out of the hands of a priestly class, the mobile internet is doing the same for medicine, giving us unprecedented control over our healthcare. With smartphones in hand, we are no longer beholden to an impersonal and paternalistic system in which “doctor knows best.” Medicine has been digitized, Topol argues; now it will be democratized.

Provocative and engrossing, The Patient Will See You Now is essential reading for anyone who thinks they deserve better health care. That is, for all of us.