Medicine itself is sick. We hardly understand any disease and therefore need to chronically
treat symptoms but not the causes. Consequently drugs and other therapies help only very few
patients yet we are pumping more and more money into our healthcare system without any added
value.Thus the internationally renowned physician researcher Harald Schmidt predicts the end
of medicine as we know it. On a positive note digitization will radically change healthcare
and lead to one of the greatest socioeconomic revolutions of mankind. He is one of the pioneers
of systems medicine a complete redefinition of what we actually call a disease how we
organize medicine and how we use Big Data to heal rather than treat to prevent rather than
cure. In this book the author first proves the deep crisis of medicine but describes how
medicine will become more precise more uniform safer and surprisingly also more affordable.
Making a diagnosis will be taken over by artificial intelligence. Current mainly organ-based
medical specialists disciplines and hospital departments will disappear. Physicians will
become patient coaches working in interdisciplinary teams with pharmacists physiotherapists
nutritionists etc. and relieved of their workload. Illnesses including cancer will be
prevented or cured in a precise manner. We will become 100 years and older. Health care
spending will shift from chronic treatment of diseases to prevention and health maintenance
thereby dramatically reducing overall costs. Health will become a common good. But Harald
Schmidt also warns that those who are not open to digitization will not benefit from these
advances and will be left behind. Anyone who wants to benefit from the revolution of medicine
must have a digital twin. Is this futurism? No each of us can have his or her personal genome
sequenced microbiome analyzed keep an electronic health record. The future has begun. Schmidt
convincingly explains the limitations in the current practice of medicine and the need for big
data and a systems approach. Prof. Ferid Murad MD PhD Nobel Laureate in Medicine 1998 USA
Network Medicine a new discipline that offers a network-based understanding of the cell and
disease is unavoidable if we wish to translate the advances in genomics into cures. Professor
Harald Schmidt a prominent expert in this space offers the first coherent treatment of the
topic explaining the potential of a network-based perspective of human disease. Prof.
Albert-László Barabási Northeastern University and Harvard Medical School Boston USA
Visionary provocative and full of insights. Professor Schmidt gives a unique and
authoritative perspective to the past present and future of medical science and clinical
practice. And all presented in such an inimitable style. Prof. Robert F.W. Moulds MBBS PhD
FRACP Former Dean Royal Melbourne Hospital Clinical School Australia
