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Machines and Medicines: A Projection of Analogies between Electric Power Systems and Health Care Systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2009

Thomas P. Hughes
Thomas P. Hughes
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

If medicine is becoming mechanized, as many indications suggest, then those interested in policy making for medical matters have much to learn from the history of technology. The mechanization of medicine, as in the case of the mechanization of production, will accelerate the transfer of skill and knowledge from people to machines and the transition of health care to a capital intensive industry (19, 196–226). Furthermore, mechanization and increasing capital intensification may bring the increased systematization of health care. If the development of mechanized medicine follows the precedent of the mechanization of production, then our society must deal with the evolution of another set of extremely large systems, systems that will become virtually impervious to social control. Historians of technology are currently providing a better understanding of the evolution of large systems of production (3;9;10); there are lessons to be learned from this history by policy makers in health care.

Type
The Cultural Shaping of Biomedical Science and Technology
Information
International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , February 1986 , pp. 285 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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