The irruption of the covid has changed the perception of public opinion about health. There have never been so many smart watches that collect steps, heart rate and all the data related to well-being. We live in times marked by the dictatorship of the digital age and very aware of the transformations that will come from artificial intelligence. Today, in a few seconds, we can automatically find out hundreds of data about our health without having to go to any clinical center or resort to any medical device. That is why it is so gratifying to hear the voice of a wise person like the cardiologist ValentÃn Fuster, who yesterday spoke at Foros de Vanguardia to get us off the cloud and remind us of the importance of old human relationships. The cardiologist defended the importance of scientific innovations, but made it very clear that human contact between doctor and patient “is unavoidable.”
For Fuster, most problems occur for emotional reasons and, no matter how intelligent the technical contributions are, there is nothing like human interlocution. “The good habit of talking to the sick is being lost,” she said.
And we could also add that the need to meditate and talk to oneself is also disappearing. This is not the case of Fuster, who explained to his audience that he begins his workday at 5 in the morning in his office at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and for 15 minutes by his watch and does not think about nothing. He merely reflects on the journey ahead of him. In his opinion, the citizens of our time are too reactive, they spend the day running and have no pause to meditate, when they should be the opposite: proactive. How right you are! There are other ways of saying it. Whoever signs this article describes his work as crazy with a runaway horse in which the main virtue he has every day is to control the beast in order to drive it and that the beast does not lead him astray. Pause and reflection are welcome. Technical contributions are necessary, but never as a substitute for the human factor.