Note: All submitted events must be approved before they appear in the calendar.
Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Rise of Distant Doctors,” on the emergence and evolution of remote healthcare, with Dr. Jeremy A. Greene, professor of medicine and director of the Institute of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University and author of The Doctor Who Wasn’t There: Technology, History, and the Limits of Telehealth.
The calamitous onset of the Covid-19 left many of us accustomed to accessing healthcare remotely, through telemedicine. But how do the electronic devices used to diagnose and treat us from a distance affect the kind of care that receive?
Gain a deep understanding of how electronic devices and new means of communication have changed healthcare—for better and for worse—with Dr. Jeremy Greene, whose research explores the ways in which medical technologies come to influence our understandings of what it means to be sick or healthy.
In a talk that pays equal attention to the history of technology, the history of medicine, and the politics and economies of American healthcare, Dr. Greene will trace the long arc of enthusiasm for—and skepticism of—electronic media in health and medicine. He’ll discussion how a radical reformation of the healthcare landscape was promised by each new platform, from the humble telephone to the connected smartphone, from FM radio to wireless wearables, from cable television to the “electronic brains” of networked mainframe computers.
He’ll look at what each new technology promised and what each delivered. He’ll discuss whether any did much to democratize access to healthcare, and what impact they had on healthcare on a personal, regional, and global level.
You might emerge as a shrewder consumer of healthcare after listening to Dr. Greene, whose also is the author of Generic: The Unbranding of Modern Medicines and Prescribing by Numbers: Drugs and the Definition of Disease. No matter what, you’ll be glad you had a chance to learn from him and pose questions to him in person, rather than at a distance. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: A cardiologist consults a patient 400 miles away. Photo by Intel Free Press / Creative Commons.
