Getting Beyond Hype Vs Hope in Precision Medicine and AI: The Life Cycle Of Technology Revolutions

Powerful new technologies have the potential to radically transform both science and society. In science, as Douglas Robertson describes in Phase Change (2003), a new technology like the microscope, the telescope, and the calculus can profoundly alter the questions we ask, and advance our ability to better understand nature. Society, visibly, can also be transformed by technology, as we’ve seen with examples ranging from the steam engine and the telegraph to automation and the internet.

The catch is, this transformation doesn’t occur overnight – far from it.  The remarkable and often maddening aspect of innovation (as I’ve discussed here, here) is the exceptionally long time it takes between the time a technology is originally invented and the time when people figure out how to use it most effectively.

In this three-part piece, I will first present a framework, developed by economist Carlota Perez, describing the life cycle of transformative technologies, and outline relevant refinements, introduced by columnist Daniel Gross. I’ll then locate our contemporary debate around the utility (or not) of precision medicine – and particularly, precision oncology – in the context of this framework; this section is richly informed by the perspective shared by key physician and physician-scientist thought leaders in this space. Finally, I’ll suggest that AI (as a proxy for the emerging excitement – and skepticism — around digital and data in health) seems to be entering the earliest stages of the technology diffusion trajectory, which may help explain both the frenzy and the confusion.

The full Forbes article can be viewed at this link.