On the first page of a google search the top hit is an article from 2019 titled Digital Medicine: A Primer on Measurement, that defines it as use of “software and algorithmically driven products to measure or intervene to improve human health” with the infographic below.
The Digital Medicine Society broadens it to “a field, concerned with the use of technologies as tools for measurement, and intervention in the service of human health”.
The Nature Digital Medicine Journal refines it further as the clinical implementation of digital and mobile technologies, virtual healthcare, data analytic methodologies and innovative sensor development to provide the necessary data and longitudinal monitoring to best inform the broadest medical community.
So when I was recruited for the Director of Digital Medicine position at the Scripps Research and Translational Institute, I did the same search before diving into the scope of work.
My take
In my professional journey I studied biology and social anthropology at Stanford. I got my medical education at UCSF and did my internal medicine training at UCSF. Then I moved to Northwestern to complete my cardiovascular diseases training followed by a device development fellowship and finally entrepreneurship training back at Stanford.
Throughout this professional journey I have been intrigued by how humans interfaced with the world of healthcare. My research endeavors have always focused on how to make medicine more user centric. Ultimately in my opinion that is what digital medicine is, a transformation of how the user interacts with a system, in this case the world of medicine.
Going Forward
In this blog you will learn in real time about my journey as Director of Digital Medicine through my life experience and with my goal of making medicine personal again.