BOOK REVIEW The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age

Through interviews with almost 100 people from different backgrounds, Dr Wachter from the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, explores how digital technology has changed the practice of medicine in the U.S. Compared to other industries, the digitisation of healthcare started much later due to the complexities of medical practice. Radiology was the earliest specialty to adopt digital technology. The Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) enabled radiology departments to digitise images. In 2000, only 8 percent of U.S. hospitals were using digital imaging and by 2008, more than 75 percent of U.S. hospitals did. With digital imaging just a click away, Wachter rues that clinicians now rarely meet to discuss cases in the radiology department. He posits that in the future, artificial intelligence will create a virtual radiologist able to diagnose a myriad of diseases. In a speciality that is about visual pattern recognition, will artificial intelligence replace the radiologists?