ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
More than three decades ago, when I graduated from medical school, there were no cell phones, no personal computers, and certainly no such thing as the Internet. No things digital—the term “digital” referred exclusively to the rectal examination.
Thirty years later, medicine continues to resist the digital revolution. In too many ways medicine is stuck with the original digital context, with its head in the wrong place. But the convergence of the digital world and medicine is inevitable, setting the stage for a radical disruption we desperately need. This has extraordinary potential for hyperinnovative means of precision in medical care and for preventive strategies we have never seen before.
Over these past three decades, I have edited over thirty medical textbooks, all for the medical community microcosm. I never thought I would be the author of a book broadly directed to the public. That changed with my realization that the convergence of the digital and medical worlds has to go forward and that the participation and primacy of consumers—before they ever become patients—would be essential for this new era of medicine to unfold.
For me, as a “rookie” author, the project took a remarkably serendipitous path. With a long-standing interest in genetics (my major in college), I came to Scripps at the end of 2006 to start a genomics institute. But residing in San Diego, the world hub of wireless technology, led to unforeseen opportunities, eventually coupling the major digital tools of genomics and wireless in two nearly adjacent, interconnected research institutes—a unique digital medical cluster.
A number of individuals set the foundation, enabling this whole project and perspective. I am deeply grateful to my closest friend, Dr. Paul Teirstein, who is the director of the Prebys Cardiovascular Institute and was instrumental in recruiting me to Scripps. The president and chief executive officer of Scripps Health, Chris Van Gorder, deserves exceptional credit for believing in what we could accomplish at Scripps and giving me carte blanche to build the programs in digital medicine. The Scripps chief medical officer, Dr. Brent Eastman, has been the consummate champion and ultimate support to help make it happen.
At our Scripps Translational Science Institute, with its emphasis on human genomics and being fully integrated with the Scripps Research Institute, I want to express my sincere gratitude to my colleagues for helping me edit the manuscript—Drs. Nicholas Schork, Samuel Levy, and Sarah Murray, and for all the animated interactions that we’ve had over the years to bring genomics into day-to-day medical practice. Katrina Schreiber, my executive assistant, provided immense help in physically getting the book together and also has been my right-hand person in an exceptionally high-throughput academic environment. Our research is supported by a flagship grant by the National Institutes of Health called the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA), and without that grant many of the projects described in this book would not even exist. Our genomics efforts have been catapulted by the presence of the world’s two largest genomic science companies in San Diego—-Life Technologies and Illumina. I am especially grateful to Greg Lucier, CEO of Life Technologies, for his unwavering support for our work in genomics.
On the wireless side, I am genuinely indebted to Gary and Mary West, who not only are extraordinary individuals and friends but have philanthropically invested in an effort to build the first dedicated wireless health institute and have supported my work in an incomparable fashion, including endowing a chair of innovative medicine and providing research backing for our ambitious efforts to transform the future of medicine. Many of the individuals we brought on at West Wireless Health Institute have been extremely helpful to me in editing the manuscript and supporting the project, including Dr. Joseph Smith, chief medical officer; Shelley Valentine, executive vice president; and Erin Bateman, my assistant. The Wests deserve utmost recognition for their profound commitment to better the future of health care.
The team at Qualcomm, the leading worldwide force in wireless technology, has been especially supportive, right from the top—Dr. Paul Jacobs, the chair and CEO; its founder, Dr. Irwin Jacobs; its president, Steve Altman; the vice president for Wireless Health, Don Jones; and all of their colleagues. They have funded training slots in our program of wireless medicine at the Scripps Translational Science Institute and connected me with the global innovations that are occurring in the digital health arena. Although I had been involved with a pioneering wireless cardiac rhythm device many years ago (CardioNet), it was the Qualcomm team that stirred my excitement about the transformative impact of wireless medicine.
All these folks helped build my knowledge base and gave me a panoramic view of the opportunities in digital medicine. But actually writing and publishing a book was a big challenge—-the hardest I have ever worked on a project in my career. Major kudos go to Thomas Kelleher—TJ—who is the executive editor at Basic Books and provided unparalleled editing and idea crystallization for the book. He deftly sharpened the message and made this a much better product. I am particularly thankful to Katinka Matson, president at Brockman, Inc., who served as my publishing agent and was instrumental in helping me develop the proposal, requiring more drafts than I’m willing to admit, along with the link to TJ. Kay Mariea and Beth Wright were vital to the editing process. My author friends—Thomas Goetz, the executive editor at Wired, and James Fowler, author of Connected—were key to referring me to Katinka Matson and Brockman. Other authors who helped prod and inspire me along the way include Malcolm Gladwell, Atul Gawande, Michael Specter, and Dean Ornish.
I want to also acknowledge any perceptual conflicts of interest. I am on the board of directors of two wireless medical device companies, DexCom, which makes sensors for diabetes, and Sotera, which makes vital sign sensors. I also serve as an advisor to Zeo, which makes a sensor to detect brain waves and promote better sleep. The experience in working with these companies has greatly enriched my understanding of the challenges in wireless medicine, along with the untapped potential. I have no interest in promoting these companies or their products in this book and have tried to be as objective as possible in describing their efforts. But certainly these relationships are important for readers to know about.
As I learned throughout this project, which took a couple of years, it takes a lot of isolation and solitude to do the research and think, no less to write. My family—my wife, Susan, and our grown-up children, Sarah and Evan—were exceptionally patient with me and supported the whole initiative. I’m so thankful to them and especially to all the folks named here to make this endeavor a reality.
Finally, let me express my appreciation to all of you who read this book and actively contribute to the creative destruction of medicine, as we know it today, by promoting our capability of digitizing human beings. My modus operandi: Think big and act bigger!