Ideas change everything

A doctor's touch

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Abraham Verghese |

TEDGlobal 2011

• July 2011

Modern medicine is in danger of losing a powerful, old-fashioned tool: human touch. Physician and writer Abraham Verghese describes our strange new world where patients are merely data points, and calls for a return to the traditional one-on-one physical exam.

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Modern medicine is in danger of losing a powerful, old-fashioned tool: human touch. Physician and writer Abraham Verghese describes our strange new world where patients are merely data points, and calls for a return to the traditional one-on-one physical exam.

Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

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About the speaker

Abraham Verghese

Physician and author

See speaker profile

In our era of the patient-as-data-point, Abraham Verghese believes in the old-fashioned physical exam, the bedside chat, the power of informed observation.

Learn more

The Stanford Medicine 25

Abraham Verghese and his team developed this series of 25 diagnostic guides to revive the culture of bedside medicine. Learn about them at stanford.edu.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

Read our curation guidelines.