The Microscope and the Megamacroscope (The Internet and The Digital Age): Impact on Medicine’s future! Kim Solez, M.D.

Slide 2 Visioning Broadly Defined! The Microscope. When Anton Van Leeuwenhoek built the first practical microscope in Holland in 1674 it changed the horizons of human beings forever, allowing them to see with their own eyes the structure of life itself. Today's high science marvels - gene chip technology,laser capture microdissection, genomics, and proteomics - are a direct extension of Van Leeuwenhoek's original discovery.

Slide 3 Visioning Broadly Defined! The Microscope.

Slide 4 Visioning Broadly Defined! The Microscope. Anton Van Leeuwenhoek’s original microscope had magnifications of 270 diameters and a simple screw thread focus adjustment

Slide 5 Visioning Broadly Defined! The Microscope. Long Life. Van Leeuwenhoek lived 91 years ( ) and during his long life he used his lenses to make pioneering studies on an extraordinary variety of things, both living and non-living, reporting his findings in over a hundred letters to the Royal Society of England and the French Academy.

Slide 6 Visioning Broadly Defined! The Microscope. Long Life. Knowledge. In 1716 at the age of 84 he wrote: "My work, which I've done for a long time, was not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more than in most other men. And therewithal, whenever I found out anything remarkable, I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof."

Slide 7 The Internet /Digital Age: Examining the basic structure of information itself.. Knowledge and information were of foremost importance to Van Leeuwenhoek. Today computers, the Internet, the Digital Age, allow us to examine the basic structure of information itself.

Slide 8 The Internet /Digital Age: Seeing Big Things: The Megamacroscope. Microscope means "seeing small things". Today's connected computers of the Internet allow us to see and conceptualize very big things, constructs that otherwise would be completely out of our reach. So connected computers become "Megamacroscopes" and again the horizon has been changed very greatly. Connections between people and ideas are being made at an increasing rate that benefit every area of human endeavor.

Slide 9 Capturing the imagination of the public and health care providers. Providing a future vision of the benefits of technology without losing the higher elements of the human spirit. 1. Data compression. 2. Point of service information. 3. High impact education. 4. Measuring impact of interventions on health.