A revolution in healthcare is coming
Welcome to Doctor You
Feb 1st 2018
NO WONDER they are called “patients”.When people enter the health-care systems of rich countries today, they know what they will get: prodding doctors, endless tests, baffling jargon, rising costs and, above all, long waits. Some stoicism will always be needed, because health care is complex and diligence matters. But frustration is boiling over.This week three of the biggest names in American business—Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase—announced a new venture to provide better, cheaper health care for their employees. A fundamental problem with today’s system is that patients lack knowledge and control. Access to data can bestow both.
The internet already enables patients to seek online consultations when and where it suits them. You can take over-the-counter tests to analyse your blood, sequence your genome and check on the bacteria in your gut. Yet radical change demands a shift in emphasis, from providers to patients and from doctors to data. That shift is happening. Technologies such as the smartphone allow people to monitor their own health. The possibilities multiply when you add the crucial missing ingredients—access to your own medical records and the ability easily to share information with those you trust. That allows you to reduce inefficiencies in your own treatment and also to provide data to help train medical algorithms. You can enhance your own care and everyone else’s, too.
jargon: the language used for a particular activity or by a particular group of people
stoicism: the quality or behavior of a person who accepts what happens without complaining or showing emotion
现在病人走进一家医院，都能预料到会是什么样的：仓促的医生，数不清的检测，看不懂的病例，涨不停的费用和无尽的等待... 病人的问题就是他们不清楚状况和缺乏对自己病情的控制
所以亚马逊和JPMorgan还有Berkshire Hathaway 成立了一个新的公司，为他们的员工提供更好更廉价的医疗
The doctor will be you now
Medical data may not seem like the type of kindling to spark a revolution. But the flow of information is likely to bear fruit in several ways. One is better diagnosis. Someone worried about their heart can now buy a watch strap containing a medical-grade monitor that will detect arrhythmias. Apps are vying to see if they can diagnose everything from skin cancer and concussion to Parkinson’s disease. Research is under way to see whether sweat can be analysed for molecular biomarkers without the need for an invasive blood test. Some think that changes in how quickly a person swipes a phone’s touchscreen might signal the onset of cognitive problems.
A second benefit lies in the management of complex diseases. Diabetes apps can change the way patients cope, by monitoring blood-glucose levels and food intake, potentially reducing long-run harm such as blindness and gangrene. Akili Interactive, a startup, plans to seek regulatory approval for a video game designed to stimulate an area of the brain implicated in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (see article).
医疗数据可能不会带来一个伟大的变革，但是会有非常多的好处，这四段分别讲了四个有用的地方，看经济学人重要的是看清楚文章的逻辑！
第一个好处是：更好地诊断
第二个好处是：管理复杂的疾病
Patients can also improve the efficiency of their care. Although health records are increasingly electronic, they are often still trapped in silos. Many contain data that machines cannot read. This can lead to delays in treatment, or worse. Many of the 250,000 deaths in America attributable to medical error each year can be traced to poorly co-ordinated care. With data at their fingertips, common standards to enable sharing and a strong incentive to get things right, patients are more likely to spot errors. On January 24th Apple laid out its plans to ask organisations to let patients use their smartphones to download their own medical records (see article).
A final benefit of putting patients in charge stems from the generation and aggregation of their data. Artificial intelligence (AI) is already being trained by a unit of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to identify cancerous tissues and retinal damage. As patients’data stream from smartphones and “wearables”, they will teach AIs to do ever more. Future AIs could, for instance, provide automated medical diagnosis from a description of your symptoms, spot behavioural traits that suggest you are depressed or identify if you are at special risk of cardiac disease. The aggregation of data will also make it easier for you to find other people with similar diseases and to see how they responded to various treatments.
第三个好处是提高医疗效率
第四个好处是病人掌控自己的数据整合等
讲完了好处接下来讲坏处...
An Apple a day
As with all new technologies, pitfalls accompany the promise. Hucksters will launch apps that do not work. But with regulators demanding oversight of apps that present risks to patients, users will harm only their wallets. Not everyone will want to take active control of their own health care; plenty will want the professionals to manage everything.Fine. Data can be pored over by those who are interested, while those who are not can opt to share data automatically with trusted providers.
The benefits of new technologies often flow disproportionately to the rich. Those fears are mitigated by the incentives that employers, governments and insurers have to invest in cost-efficient preventive care for all. Alphabet has recently launched a firm called Cityblock Health, for example, which plans to trawl through patients’ data to provide better care for low-income city dwellers, many of them covered by Medicaid, an insurance programme for poorer Americans.
pitfall: a danger or problem that is hidden or not obvious at first
pore over: to read or study something very carefully
trawl: to search through something in order to find someone or something
很多先进的技术都是益了富人，因此这需要纳税人，政府和保险公司一起想出保障到所有人的医疗制度
Google在这方面有做出了努力，成立了一各公司Cityblock Health，为低收入人群提供更好的医疗！（真心觉得googlers 是为了人类进步而发展的公司...)
Other risks are harder to deal with.Greater transparency may encourage the hale and hearty not to take out health insurance. They may even make it harder for the unwell to find cover. Regulations can slow that process—by requiring insurers to ignore genetic data, for example—but not stop it. Security is another worry. The more patient data are analysed in the cloud or shared with different firms, the greater the potential threat of hacking or misuse. Almost a quarter of all data breaches in America happen in health care. Health firms should face stringent penalties if they are slapdash about security, but it is naive to expect that breaches will never happen.
Will the benefits of making data more widely available outweigh such risks? The signs are that they will. Plenty of countries are now opening up their medical records, but few have gone as far as Sweden. It aims to give all its citizens electronic access to their medical records by 2020; over a third of Swedes have already set up accounts. Studies show that patients with such access have a better understanding of their illnesses, and that their treatment is more successful. Trials in America and Canada have produced not just happier patients but lower costs, as clinicians fielded fewer inquiries. That should be no surprise. No one has a greater interest in your health than you do. Trust in Doctor You.
hale: healthy and strong, usually used in the phrase hale and hearty
一个坏处就是让那些身体情况良好的人不会再买保险，而让那些身体不好的人很难买到保险；还有分享的数据越多，就越有可能发生数据泄露和被黑客黑的可能
stringent: very strict or severe
slapdash: quick and careless
那分享这些医疗数据到底是不是利大于弊还是弊大于利？种种迹象标明是 利大于弊的！
总结：科技改变生活，本文是这期经济学人杂志的封面文章
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Results
Lexile®Measure: 1100L - 1200L
Mean Sentence Length: 16.04
Mean Log Word Frequency: 3.16
Word Count: 1030
这篇文章的蓝思值是在1100-1200L， 适合英语专业大二的水平学习，是经济学人里比较简单的
使用kindle断断续续地读《经济学人》三年，发现从一开始磕磕碰碰到现在比较顺畅地读完，进步很大，推荐购买！ 点击这里可以去亚马逊官网购买~
As fuels, oil and electricity have meaningfully different characteristics
OIL shaped the 20th century. In war, the French leader Georges Clemenceau said, petroleum was “as vital as blood”. In peace the oil business dominated stock markets, bankrolled despots and propped up the economies of entire countries. But the 21st century will see oil’s influence wane. Cheap natural gas, renewable energy, electric vehicles and coordinated efforts to tackle global warming together mean that the power source of choice will be electricity.
That is welcome. The electricity era will diminish the clout of the $2trn oil trade, reduce the choke points that have made oil a source of global tension, put energy production into local hands and make power more accessible to the poor. It will also make the world cleaner and safer—reassuringly dull, even. The trouble is getting from here to there. Not just oil producers, but everyone else, too, may find the transition perilous .
bankroll: to supply money for ( a business, project, person, etc.)
despot: a ruler who has total power and who often uses that power in cruel and unfair ways
perilous: full of danger: dangerous
石油早就了20世纪，在战争年代，石油就像血液一样重要；在和平年代，它掌控着经济命脉...
Oil and electricity are a study in contrasts (see our special report). Oil is a wonder fuel, packed with more energy by weight than coal and by volume than natural gas (both still the main sources of electricity). It is easy to ship, store and turn into myriad refined products, from petrol to plastics to pharmaceuticals. But it is found only in specific places favoured by geology. Its production is concentrated in a few hands, and its oligopolistic suppliers—from the Seven Sisters to OPEC and Russia—have consistently attempted to drip-feed it on to the market to keep prices high.Concentration and cartelisation make oil prone to crises and the governments of oil-rich states prone to corruption and abuse.
石油有很多的优点，很容易运输，储存和合成其他产品... from petrol to plastics to pharmaceuticals 记住这个表达
但石油只产在某几个国家与地区，就让这些国家形成了垄断...
Different kettles of fuel
Electricity is less user-friendly than oil. It is hard to store, it loses its oomph when shipped over long distances, and its transmission and distribution require hands-on regulation. But in every other way, it promises a more peaceful world.
Electricity is hard to monopolise because it can be produced from numerous sources of fuel, from natural gas and nuclear to wind, solar, hydro and biomass . The more these replace coal and oil as fuel for generation, the cleaner it promises to be. Given the right weather conditions, it is abundant geographically, too. Anyone can produce electricity—fromgreener-than-thou Germans to energy-poor Kenyans.
oomph: power or energy ( his argument lacks oomph; the truck doesn't have the oomph to haul the boat)
电力能源虽然不如石油方便，但是却不会被某几个国家垄断，很多方法可以产生电力能源：风力，太阳能，氢能等
True, the technologies used to produce electricity from renewable resources, and the rare earths and minerals that some, including solar panels and wind turbines, rely on, could be subject to protectionism and trade wars. China, which produces 85% of the world’s rare earths, sharply tightened export quotas in 2010 with OPEC-like zeal. America and the European Union have slapped tariffs on Chinese solar-panel imports. Yet the vital substances involved in generating and storing electricity are not burned up like oil. Once a stock of them exists it can for the most part be recycled. And, even if today’s output is concentrated, for most materials the planet has undeveloped deposits or substitutes that can thwart a would-be monopolist. Rare earths, for example, are not rare—one of them, cerium , is almost as common as zinc.
Electricity also rewards co-operation.Because renewables are intermittent , regional grids are needed to ship electricity from where it is plentiful to where it is not. This could replicate the pipeline politics that Russia engages in with its natural-gas shipments to Europe. More likely, as grids are interconnected so as to diversify supply, more interdependent countries will conclude that manipulating the market is self-defeating. After all, unlike gas, you cannot keep electricity in the ground.
thwart: to prevent someone from doing something or to stop something from happening
intermittent: starting, stopping, and starting again: not constant or steady
An electric world is therefore desirable.But getting there will be hard, for two reasons. First, as rents dry up, authoritarian oil-dependent governments could collapse. Few will miss them, but their passing could cause social unrest and strife. Oil producers had a taste of what is to come when the price plunged in 2014-16, which led to deep, and unpopular, austerity measures. Saudi Arabia and Russia have temporarily stopped the rot by curtailing production and pushing oil prices higher, as part of an“OPEC+” agreement. They need high prices to buy time to wean their economies off oil. But the higher the oil price, the greater the incentive for energy-thirsty behemoths like China and India to invest in renewable-powered electrification to give themselves cheaper and more secure supplies. Should the producers’ alliance crumble in the face of a long-term decline in demand for oil, prices could once again tumble, this time for good.
wean: to start feeding ( a child or young animal) food other than its mother's milk
从石油能源时代转换到电力能源时代是一个艰难的过程，第一个难点就是石油价格下降的话，这些产油国就会产生动荡和冲突...
That will lead to the second danger: the fallout for investors in oil assets. America’s frackers need only look at the country’s woebegone coalminers to catch a glimpse of their fate in a distant post-oil future. The International Energy Agency, a forecaster, reckons that, if action to limit global warming to below 2°C accelerates in coming years,$1trn of oil assets could be stranded, ie, rendered obsolete. If the transition is unexpectedly sudden, stockmarkets will be dangerously exposed.
The tension is inescapable.On the one hand government policy should press forward with the transition as fast as it can. On the other, a rapid transition will cause upheaval. Expect the big consumers, especially India and China, to force the pace.
woebegone: looking or feeling very sad
点评：矛盾是无法避免的，一方面各国政府希望尽快转变到可持续的能源（产油国除外），另一方面这个转变过程速度太快的话会造成动乱。一言以蔽之，就是钱惹的祸
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Results
Lexile®Measure: 1100L - 1200L
Mean Sentence Length: 16.09
Mean Log Word Frequency: 3.21
Word Count: 853
这篇文章的蓝思值是在1100-1200L， 是经济学人里普通难度的文章~
使用kindle断断续续地读《经济学人》三年，发现从一开始磕磕碰碰到现在比较顺畅地读完，进步很大，推荐购买！ 点击这里可以去亚马逊官网购买~
