Read Online Cell by Robin Cook - Free Book Online

an unintended way.”
    â€œHuman touch is not an issue,” Paula said, shaking her head. “That’s been proven by the reaction of twenty thousand people during the beta test. Hardly a small sample. iDoc’s acceptance has been extraordinary. And it has cut down regular doctor appointments and emergency room visits by an astounding forty-five percent. No one in the beta-test group complained about the human-touch issue. They
did
say over and over again how much they appreciated the ease of use on a twenty-four-seven basis. Being able to talk with their iDoc doctor when it suited them and for as many times as they felt the need to trumped any other issue. Think about it, the average person gets less than an hour of face time with their primary-care physician in an entire year. You call that a human touch? I call that missing in action. Availability trumps all other issues. Doctors over the years have made themselves progressively harder and harder to reach. Email has helped, but not enough doctors have embraced it to make a difference.”
    George opened his mouth to respond but couldn’t think of any rational comeback.
    Paula sensed she won the point and pressed forward. “As for hacking, iDoc has the most advanced firewall technology available. And we don’t see privacy as the issue it once was. In an era when one hundred percent of the population has health insurance available to them and preexisting conditions can no longer preclude getting insurance, privacy diminishes in importance. As to your last point about accidental access, the iDoc app is biometrically accessed. It will only open for access when the intended user presses his fingerprint on the app. Access closes after sixty seconds of nonuse. And that’s just the first level. iDoc uses voice recognition in answering questions or divulging personal information. It also uses Eye-Verify, which analyzes the blood vessels in a user’s iris to verify authenticity. Its accuracy is on par with that of a fingerprint. Also, since iDoc monitors vital signs, it always knows where the user is in relation to the phone. Finally, iDoc is quantum cloud based. Very little actual personal medical information is stored on the phone itself. What data is stored we encrypt. So, if someone’s phone is stolen, there’s not much anyone can get off it. We can also wipe a phone clean remotely if a patient notifies us of a lost or stolen phone or in the event of death, when iDoc recognizes that vital signs have ceased.”
    George was silent. They seemed to have all the bases covered, and covered well. He still didn’t want to believe it was all so nice and tidy, but there was little he could say that would sound reasonable.
    â€œA doctor working here in the call center isn’t all that different from a radiologist like yourself. You’re both just interpreting data generated by technology.”
    George ignored the comment and moved to firmer ground. “You’re blurring the line of what a doctor is by cutting the primary-care physician out of the equation and acting as one yourself. ‘Yourself’ being Amalgamated, an insurance company. When did their executives go to medical school?”
    Paula stared at George with her lips pursed. “A blue-ribbon team of the nation’s top doctors contributed their knowledge and experience to the development of our algorithm. iDoc also has all known and recorded medical knowledge at its disposal—textbooks, lab studies, journal articles. In short, it is the most knowledgeable doctor in the world, and it forgets nothing and is constantly updated. On top of that, it has the added benefit of continuous, real-time vital signs. It can compare that data against the patient’s complete medical history in less than two-tenths of a second. It can take any new information, such as test results, and compare it to the patient’s historical data and all known medical