All things digital are public. There is no encryption program that cannot be broken, no password that cannot be deciphered, and no medical record that is not shared. These facts affect your health and will impact some of the decisions you will make to survive.

Which are you: a statistic or a person with a problem? If you ask the government, or many of the “managed” health care plans, you are seen as a “life”—as in, how many “lives” will be treated and at what cost? If you ask a doctor who has your best interests at heart, you are a person. But if he or she says they must follow a guideline for your arthritis care, walk out. Here is why.

When you see a doctor, you have three choices: Ignore their advice and go somewhere else, trust them to solve your problem and move on, or engage with them as an advisor for life. Magic happens when doctor and patient bond forever.

Hospitalization can be a pretty bad experience. Almost everyone needs a guardian to protect them while there. Here are some observations that may help you.

The PCL (posterior cruciate ligament) can be ruptured in car accidents when the knee hits the dashboard and in ski accidents when knees get impacted in wild falls. If left alone, the injured knee degrades over time. Understanding the injury and novel ways to treat it has changed its natural history.

Artificial Intelligence-enabled systems that interpret radiologic studies are advancing to the point where they often match the best radiologists in the world. And they are getting better every day. From CT scans to MRIs, angiograms to Doppler studies, the data captured is digital—and digital data can be read by machines.

If you want to be treated with a better than 75% chance of success—and if you value excellence as much as kindness—I suggest you demand that creativity be part of the doctor’s repertoire.

Keeping down health care costs is a good idea—but not when it stifles innovation and hobbles new medical techniques.

Does “Big Data” equal Big Health Care—or just a Big Mess?

The science of life extension seems completely seductive—who wouldn’t want to enjoy a longer lifespan? But it comes with surprisingly huge costs.

In the traditional model of medicine, people visit the doctor when they’re sick or injured. But one of the most important fields of medicine today involves “predictive science:” learning well beforehand what will cause disease or injury, and treating it pro-actively. At the moment it sounds like science fiction.

A new doctor, fresh out of a top residency and fellowship, wants all the right things at the wrong time.

The answer is not obvious. Doctors know enormous amounts of data and have years of clinical experience. But what do they know about which devices and implants to use?

In medicine, as with sports, it doesn’t help to be distracted by an unsuccessful approach as you are dealing with the immediate consequences. Practice being a Monday morning quarterback.

Electronic medical records mean doctors and nurses spend too much time on data entry. Artificial Intelligence has long since solved highly formulaic situations and could prompt doctors to be better at their jobs.