Family practitioners and paramedics who have direct contact with patients will be able to draw more effectively on specialized expertise and advanced medical technology as the traditional doctor’s black bag mutates into a sophisticated digital telecommunications device. An obvious peril is that health care delivery may become an even more depersonalized and technocratic process. Either way, the logic of health care facility location and internal organization is changing dramatically … Itinerant healers are returning. They will ride the information superhighway.
Predictor: Mitchell, William J.
Prediction, in context:In his 1994 book “City of Bits,” MIT computer scientist William J. Mitchell writes:”One promise of telemedicine is that the isolated, the immobilized, and those in sudden, acute need will be able to get care without difficult and time-consuming travel. Another is that family practitioners and paramedics who have direct contact with patients will be able to draw more effectively on specialized expertise and advanced medical technology as the traditional doctor’s black bag mutates into a sophisticated digital telecommunications device. An obvious peril is that health care delivery may become an even more depersonalized and technocratic process. Either way, the logic of health care facility location and internal organization is changing dramatically; whereas the industrial, antiseptic care, and medical technology revolutions of the nineteenth and early 20th centuries created powerful incentives to centralize medical care and concentrate it in major urban areas, the digital telecommunications revolution of the late 20th century creates possibilities for decentralization and more equitable dispersion. Itinerant healers are returning. They will ride the information superhighway.”
Biography:William J. Mitchell was a professor and dean of architecture at MIT and the author of the predictive book “City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn” (1994). He also taught at Harvard, Yale, Carnegie-Mellon and Cambridge Universities. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Medical/Professional
Name of publication: City of Bits
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 4: Recombinant Architecture
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-books/City_of_Bits/index.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney