The Doctor of the Future

Cost, access, quality -- the prognosis for American health care may look grim, but innovation is the cure. The medicine of tomorrow is being born today.

BY Chuck Salter | May 1, 2009

Photograph by Jamie Chung | Prop Styling by Bryan Byrn

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Photograph by Tanit Sakakini

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In March, President Obama identified "the biggest threat to our nation's balance sheet." Not major banks on the brink of insolvency. Not paralyzed credit markets. Not a bailout tab in the trillions. The biggest threat, he warned, "by a wide margin," is "the skyrocketing price of health care."

Health care accounts for $1 in every $6 spent in the United States -- and costs are climbing at twice the rate of inflation. Every year, an estimated 1.5 million families lose their homes because of medical bills. Although we have the world's most expensive health-care system, 24 countries have a longer life expectancy and 34 have a lower infant-mortality rate, according to the latest United Nations report.

But some physicians and surgeons have been quietly rethinking and reinventing medicine for the 21st century. Often collaborating with innovative companies, these pioneers are experimenting with cutting-edge technologies, from software to robots, that have the power to revolutionize the medical landscape -- producing better outcomes, lower costs, broader access, and greater convenience. And advances on a far greater scale could emerge from the stimulus package and the $634 billion the Obama administration proposes to invest in health-care reform; the much-discussed expansion of electronic medical records (see Why Electronic Health Records Are Worth the Hype--and the Price) is just the beginning. As these breakthroughs come together, they will change the world for patients, doctors, insurers, regulators -- all of us.

The doctor of the future will see you. Now.

From Issue 135 | May 2009