At FutureMed, Richard Satava argued for an electronic medical record that includes full body scans packed with data for every patient.
At FutureMed, Dr. Richard Satava gave an impressive presentation that touched on everything from breakthroughs in surgical robotics to plasma medicine. He is a professor of surgery at the University of Washington Medical Center, but he also helped pioneer the surgical robotic system that eventually became Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci.

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Early in his talk, Satava stressed the need for a new scientific methodology. While the scientific method has served us well and will do so going forward, it has limitations. In the future, we should expand our reliance on simulation technology, which "takes our current information technologies out of the present and brings them into the future." Simulation technology, once it is able to mimic human biological processes, would disrupt the clinical trial process. "Right now, it costs $200 million dollars and 20 years to go through a complete, randomized clinical study," he said. But in the future, clinical trials won't be based on "blood and guts" -- they'll be based on bits and bytes. And they will be much more accurate and faster to carry out.
And, we should look more carefully at outliers generated from scientific research, he said. "That may be the key to the next revolution."
A VIRTUAL PERSON
Satava stressed the need for information-based representations of patients in medicine. "We need to have a new kind of electronic medical record," he said. A medical record should include a personal body scan with data embedded into it. As an example of this, he pointed to the holomer: (HOLO-graphic M-edical E-lectronic R-epresentation) developed by DARPA. In particular, patients should have such a scan done when they are well. That way, when they are ill or have an injury, a new scan can be done and compared against the previous data. When a person is ill or injured, it is the change in status that is the important factor.