The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine's Computer Age

Better, safer, cheaper healthcare? A nationally renowned healthcare professional explains how we can finally achieve the seemingly impossible: a healthcare system that works for everyone What may be the most important system ever devised is undergoing complete transformation-and Disrupted takes you to heart of it. In this book that's sure to draw interest and controversy from any number of camps, Dr. Robert Wachter describes the transition of healthcare from an impossibly complex array of unconnected systems and specialties to a homogenous, high-tech entity that wires everything together via computers. Wachter discusses how this is all beginning to happen now, what it will look like in the end, and how people and professionals will benefit.

Robert Wachter is Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where he directs the 60-physician Division of Hospital Medicine. Author of 250 articles, he coined the term "hospitalist" in 1996 and is generally considered the "father" of the hospitalist field, the fastest growing specialty in the history of modern medicine. He is past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, past chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and a recipient of the Eisenberg Award, the nation's top honor in patient safety. For the past seven years, Modern Healthcare magazine has named him one of the 50 most influential physician-executives in the U.S., the only academic physician to receive this recognition. He has been profiled in The New York Times and contributes regularly to The Wall Street Journal. This is his sixth book.