Modern Medicine desperately needs an absolute theoretical (logarithmic or exponential) basis to mathematically quantify the Significance of medical digital information (or data) that are stored in each patient’s digital records, to establish some necessary hierarchy or order in a way similar to the order achieved by the concept of “Indications” (for different forms of treatment etc.) to the pre-hippocratic chaos of erratic personal arbitrary medical opinions, then heavily biased.
If a quantification of medical information’s Differential Significance is achieved, then the following dangers can be eliminated:
i) crucial, important medical information in small quantity, expressed in fewest bits (e.g. ‘Presence of Absence of spread of a cancer after staging investigations and procedures,’ ‘patient Alive or Dead’), may be hidden in a flooded ocean of large amounts of data (in GBs) much less important,
ii) deep learning diagnostic algorithms may not become efficient to recognize the sequential hierarchy of significance of heterogenous medical digital data that should be taken into account in order to reach a safe and reasonable final conclusion.—
As a computer scientist I was surprised to read a book written by a physician, yet so rich in different interesting data combined: archaeology, linear b syllabary, Homer's poetry, information theory, staging of cancer, medical diagnostic principles.
Even the footnotes contain valuable thoughts. The book is both comprehensive and short, as the ideas expressed are condensed; it is pleasingly read as a whole in one go.
More than happy to highly recommend this book.
As someone who has trouble with higher math, isn't involved in the medical community, and doesn't live in Greece, my perspective may be lacking weight.
That said, I was able to follow the points being made, and they were quite compelling. The modern age has swept everything along in a tsunami of data, and medical coding and billing suffers right along with everything else.
How does one sort through an ocean of of 1s and 0s looking for that one tidbit that weighs heavier in importance than most of the others? Shouldn't doctors, particularly emergency doctors, be able to quickly see the most important things first in some graduated format? If you go in for surgery, wouldn't it obviously be more important to let the surgeon know that you have an allergy to a common anesthetic than telling them what your temperature and blood pressure were five years ago during a routine exam?
This book certainly lays out a good argument for modern Greek medicine to find a better system for prioritizing patient data over time. The author does suggest general criteria for such a system; it might be an even more beneficial book if the author can really lay out a theoretical system and spend time selling that to the reader along with those arguments. Perhaps in a future edition.
Excellent short book. The author is taking us on a journey of how information is quantified and how it is used in modern medicine. Examples support the learning. Although medical jargon is inevitable, it is explained as much as possible, hence non medical background readers an follow the well written text. The author creates a balanced approach of benefits v risks of the large quanties of data collected per patient. Conclusions are drawn and this allows the reader to compare own conclusions to the author’s. I recommend the book to all of you who collect data daily and also worry about how data is being used globally.
