Eric Topol: Docs Must Adopt Health IT More Quickly

The current shift in the healthcare industry to digitize care unquestionably is the biggest shakeup in the history of medicine, according to cardiologist Eric Topol, a professor of genomics at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego and author of "The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care." Still, Topol (right) says, the industry has a ways to go before it will be able to shake its "slow moving" reputation; the public, he adds, will be key to driving that change.

"We need to take initiative and ask our physicians why they're using old tools or sending us for outdated tests," Topol, who is slated to give the Tuesday, March 5 keynote address at HIMSS13 in New Orleans, tells FierceHealthIT in an exclusive interview. "We need to tell our doctors that we don't want to be in the dark, getting some cookbook recipe for care of one kind of disease or another."

In part one of this two-part interview, Topol talks about the importance of using digital tools, in addition to giving his take on the progress of genome sequencing.