We rely on technology in healthcare because of the many advances it has brought to medicine, says HealthMaker Stephen Sergay, MD, clinical neurologist. In this video, he says that there are cases when technology is used inappropriately.
It's a complex question because we are very reliant on technology. This is the technology era and there're things that we can find out now that we could never find out before that patients from blood tests to MRI scans and so on and so forth. So it's necessary, it's needed and I would not derive its value.
I believe when it's inappropriately used, we could be considered too reliant on this and there are time people I find are reliant on that, is when they does spend time talking to patients and say, we're getting MRI scan and then we will see what has to be done. In that we're too reliant.
If you look at the statistics, the number of scans, the increase in the number of scans over the last 10 years is far more than the increase in patient visits. The patient visits are important, and perhaps there should be even more of those, but I still believe we will need more and more technology as time goes on, because of the value that that adds to the medical equation.
Previously Stephen Sergay, MD, was a neurologist at the Lahey Clinic Foundation and was an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School. He completed medical school in Africa and his neurology residency at Harvard Longwood.
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