Before the invention of the stethoscope, doctors routinely laid their ears on chests of patients to check how they were doing. Homemade concoctions, essentially placebos, often made people feel better. Doctors visited homes of patients who would later pay them whatever they could afford. Local apothecaries sold morphine, a derivative of opium, to reduce pain. Medicine for its part was a nascent science – most of today’s diseases were yet to be discovered.
Fast forward to today, health care is a multi-trillion dollar industry. Medicine has branched into 120 recognized specialties and subspecialties, spinning out several industries like pharma, biotechnology, medical devices and so on with billions of drugs prescribed and lab tests performed every year. Medicine is no longer within the domain of the doctor and patient – it’s a science with ever increasing complexity.
While this advancement has helped in doubling our life expectancy in the last 100 years, the complexity of our health care system is hurting more than helping.
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