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How Technology is Transforming GI Practice
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Technological innovation continues to impact virtually every aspect of modern life, and medical practice is certainly no exception. While gastroenterology is already largely regarded as a tech-driven field, clinicians interviewed for this month’s cover story expect even more novel digital health technologies to emerge in coming years, as well as a corresponding new type of physician called “the digitalist.”
A digitalist is a health care provider who uses digital technologies to communicate with patients and colleagues from a central location, according to Brennan M. Spiegel, MD, MSHS, AGAF, FACG, director of health services research in academic affairs and clinical transformation at Cedars-Sinai Health System, and Healio Gastroenterology Peer Perspective Board member William D. Chey, MD, professor, internal medicine, at the University of Michigan Health System, division of gastroenterology, Ann Arbor, Mich. The use of wearable biosensors, mobile health apps, social media, telemedicine and other technologies would foster communication outside of the traditional in-office visit, they said.
“This doctor doesn’t quite exist yet,” Spiegel told Healio Gastroenterology. “It is starting to form, and I predict that within 3 to 5 years, we will be hearing about digitalists, or doctors like digitalists, much more frequently,” he said.
“Digital platforms will soon allow us to assess and track symptoms and diet in ways that will change the dynamic between patients and health care providers,” Chey added.
In addition, this month we have compiled the most widely read articles from the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America’s Advances in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases conference, which was held in Orlando, Fla., in December.
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The Editors Healio Gastroenterology gastroenterology@slackinc.com