The Doctor Dilution

Just when you thought they couldn’t dilute the doctor’s role in patient care even more here comes Forward with their CarePod.

Aoun, who cofounded San Francisco-based health tech startup Forward in 2016 and today announced a fresh $100 million in funding to bring 25 of these pods to malls across the country, compares his healthcare approach to what Elon Musk is building at Tesla. The goal, like Musk’s vision of self-driving cars, is to put medicine on autopilot. “Slowly but surely we’re just migrating every single thing from doctor and nurse to hardware and software,” Aoun said. “In fact, we don’t even believe a doctor’s office should exist.”

You got to love this guy. Forward has been blowing through money since they started. They started out with patients having their own doctor but that was soon diluted into them having their own team and you know what that means. Now they want you to have your own AI doctor or CarePod.

Rather than the more traditional primary care that Forward offers at these clinics, the CarePod is an attempt to fully automate a check-up: A patient approaches the metallic, square 8×8 foot box, which is eight feet by eight feet, and unlocks it with their phone. Once inside, they find a chair and a large screen, where a robotic voice walks them through a body scan or blood pressure reading or finger prick blood draws — all of which they do on their own.

That really sounds like a lot of nothing. It’s like eating cotton candy. It starts out looking big and enticing but ends up dissolving into nothing in your mouth. Who are they kidding with this? They just want to get rid of doctors to save money. Oh, by the way, they raised $100 million to offer its “first batch” of 25 CarePods. Unbelievable.

I think technology is great as an adjunct. But remember, even in Star Trek they never got rid of Dr. McCoy.

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