Total Recall - C. Gordon Bell [39]
Having all this personal information at your fingertips really helps. Recently, I had to fill out a form for the Australian government enumerating all the countries I have visited over my lifetime, including the time and duration of the visit. That would have been daunting in the old days, but with e-memories it was no problem. Jim Gemmell has saved time and made arrangements more quickly on numerous occasions simply by having scans of his children’s birth certificates handy for sports teams that are constantly demanding them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on a trip and can’t remember how to use some feature of my camera. I refuse to carry an instruction manual that is bigger than the camera, but now that my camera’s instruction manual is in my e-memory, it’s never a problem anymore.
E-memory will be of great value to all kinds of organizations. It will be at the heart of businesses like law firms, software companies, hospitals, banks, retail stores, electricians, winemakers, and airports. It will be employed by nonprofit organizations of all kinds, including homeowners’ associations, school boards, lodges, churches, and hobby clubs. From the boardrooms of gigantic corporations down to the kitchen table of a small family, Total Recall will help get things done.
CHAPTER 5
HEALTH
‘Let’s have a look,” said the doctor.
I parted the baby-blue hospital gown to expose my chest, which was dappled with faint red blotches. The doctor peered at them appraisingly.
“Yes . . . well . . . they look a bit better, don’t they?” he said. “I think we can get you out of here by Saturday.”
It was the middle of August 2007, about a month after my second double-bypass surgery. I was in the hospital because those faint blotches might indicate a complication that could lead to another operation. I didn’t say anything, but I knew for a fact that the blotches had not changed. I knew this because I had been taking pictures of them daily with my digital camera and comparing them side by side on my PC.
The reason I kept mum was my desperation to be discharged by Saturday so that I could celebrate my birthday at home. I probably should have told him the truth, but I was miserable after almost a month of hospitalization and reasoned that I would start running a temperature if the situation became serious. The doctor, relying on his memory, discharged me. I got my wish for a birthday party at home, and the blotches eventually went away.
This episode illustrates how often professional health care strays from quantitative analysis. “How long have you had the fever?” asks the nurse, and I struggle to pick a likely time. “Do you recall what you ate before the migraine?” asks the physician, and I realize I have absolutely no clue. I was supposed to be noticing? Then there’s that pseudoquantitative classic: “On a scale of one to ten, how much pain do you feel?” Doctors hear plenty of vague and qualitative complaints: “I’ve been feeling run-down for weeks” or “I get these pains sometimes.” What a difference it would make if patients could follow their complaints with, “Here’s a graph of my temperature every hour for the past two weeks,” or “Here’s a time line of everything I’ve eaten in the last month, with times of migraines noted,” or, in my case, “Here are twenty photos of my rash, taken daily.”
In the Total Recall world, health records will be transformed into minutely detailed chronicles of vital signs, behavior, diet, and exercise along with physicians’ diagnoses, prescriptions, advice, and test results. Your e-memory software will make managing this total health record