

Bay Area Doctors Quit Medicine to Work for Digital Health Startups - raybanz
http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/07/17/increasingly-young-bay-area-doctors-leave-medicine-for-digital-health/

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dekhn
None of the people quit medicine. They just chose to have a greater impact by
not seeing patients.

Doctors who see patients are effectively professional laborers. Their impact
is limited primarily to the patients they see.

Doctors who step off the patient treadmill can contribute to health in ways
that affect more people than they could if they were just seeing individuals.

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noname123
IMHO, a trained professional who can effectively diagnose and treat someone's
medical condition, from something serious like cancer to minor like skin rash
made a bigger difference in that person's life than someone who improved
seconds off that person's "e-commerce checkout funnel" or delivered more
"personal targeted ads" or even more improved "electronic medical patient
records retrieval and storage" for that matter.

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sjg007
You should measure this statistically in terms of lives impacted. For
instance, a service matching patients to clinical trials could have a massive
impact. Ad tech that connects donors to allow free delivery of clean water.
It's a false dichotomy to say such work is not impactful.

Good, intuitive portable emergency records would save millions of lives.
Checklists (as pioneered by airlines) save lives in medicine. Is a good
collaborative checklist technology not up to this standard?

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ndonnellan
The title is a little misleading in my opinion, as the article is describing
new med-school graduates.

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Zencastr
Mike Judge's "Silicon Valley" show hits closer to reality everyday.

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beatpanda
How much of this is caused by the absurd economic pressure in the Bay Area?

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qq66
The median lifetime earnings of a practicing doctor are much higher than a med
school graduate working in digital health.

