Medicine and the Machine

Join Medscape editor-in-chief Eric Topol, MD, and master storyteller and clinician Abraham Verghese, MD, as they interview experts on the hottest topics in healthcare ranging from COVID-19 to social determinants of health to bringing humanity back to medicine. Subscribe Now

Tragedy, Hope, and a Medical Mystery: 'The Covenant of Water' Dr Eric Topol and Dr Robert Harrington interview Dr Abraham Verghese about his fiction writing methods and Oprah's enthusiasm for his latest novel.
Medscape, June 2023

There's No Place Like Home for Hospital Care Dr Helen Ouyang on why she writes so much about the hospital-at-home movement: It's the future, one way or another.
Rogue Faculty and Academic Freedom in the Age of Misinformation Should our nation's academic institutions rein in faculty who amplify conspiracy theories and spread potentially harmful falsehoods?
How AI and Chatbots Can Make Us Healers Again ChatGPT and large language models offer physicians the chance to do what they went to medical school for: connect with patients and help them regain their health.
The Mathematician Who Knows Uncertainty Is Unavoidable Eric Topol and Abraham Verghese chat with the UK's professor Hannah Fry about taking risks and asking the right questions.
To Stop COVID, We Must Clean Up Our Air Two-way masking is pretty effective, but it's not sustainable. Environmental engineer and viral transmission expert Dr Linsey Marr reveals how we can fight COVID by tackling our contaminated air.
How We Can Err if We Rely on Randomized Controlled Trials Dr Trish Greenhalgh explains how we miss the boat when we discount real-world evidence in favor of randomized trial evidence.
How We Create--Then Blame--A Viral Underclass Stephen Thrasher discusses his new book, The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide.
A Virologist's Take on Polio, Monkeypox, and COVID-19 Virologist Jeremy Kamil shares his relatively upbeat perspective on the viral threats we face today.
We Are Failing to Use What We've Learned About COVID Another COVID-19 variant is inevitable because we aren't doing anything to stop it, says UK operational researcher Christina Pagel.
Hidden in Plain Sight: If AI Can Detect Race, What About Bias? An AI model accurately predicts a person's race from a chest radiograph with stunning accuracy. Here's why it matters, and how it poses research questions about bias in medicine.
Long COVID: A Very Big Umbrella Abraham Verghese talks with Stanford's Dr Linda Geng, who is studying the puzzling and poorly understood postviral phenomenon known as long COVID.
How DeepMind Unlocks Medicine's Secrets Eric Topol speaks with DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis about harnessing the potential of AI in health and medicine.
How Medicine Is Failing a Nation in Pain Pain is central to every specialty, and we all played a part in the opioid crisis, says Dr Haider Warraich, author of The Song of Our Scars: The Untold Story of Pain.
Animal Reservoirs, Immunocompromised Hosts: COVID Dangers Ahead Stanford's Benjamin Pinsky on the potential for even more transmissible and pathogenic versions of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to arise.
Eric Topol: 'I Still Have My Guard Up' Why we should be shifting into high gear on treatments for long COVID and a pan-beta-coronavirus vaccine.
The Medical Model Doesn't Work for Mental Health Former NIMH Director Tom Insel explains how the medical model has failed the field of psychiatry.
Why Test to Treat is Imperative Now Epidemiologist-engineer Michael Mina thinks diagnostics belong in the hands of the people.
'Historic Botched Job': CDC's, Others' Failed COVID Communication Randy Olson on what science can learn from Hollywood about communicating with the masses.
COVID Vaccines for the Under 5's: The 'Finish Line' We Need ‘Your Local Epidemiologist’ Katelyn Jetelina translates the COVID science for millions.

Eric Topol, MD Medscape Editor-in-Chief Eric Topol, MD, has led the flagship National Institutes of Health–supported Scripps Translational Science Institute since 2006 and cofounded the West Wireless Health Institute. He is a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research and senior consultant in the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases at Scripps Clinic. Topol pioneered the development of many routinely used medications, including tissue plasminogen activator, clopidogrel (Plavix), bivalirudin (Angiomax), and abciximab (ReoPro), and was the first physician to raise safety concerns about rofecoxib (Vioxx). He has published 1100 peer-reviewed articles and over 30 medical textbooks.

Topol was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (formerly Institute of Medicine) of the National Academy of Sciences and is one of the top 10 most cited researchers in medicine. He is the author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine (2012), The Patient Will See You Now (2015), and Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again (2019), published by Basic Books.

Abraham Verghese, MD Abraham Verghese, MD, is a critically acclaimed best-selling author and a physician with an international reputation for his focus on healing in an era when technology often overwhelms the human side of medicine. Now vice chair and professor of the theory and practice of medicine in the Department of Medicine at Stanford University, he was born in Ethiopia and was educated at Madras Medical College in India. Dr Verghese's books include My Own Country: A Doctor's Story, The Tennis Partner: A Doctor's Story of Friendship and Loss, and Cutting for Stone. His writing has also appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Verghese was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, is a 2014 recipient of the Heinz Award for Arts and Humanities, and in 2016 received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama.