Star Trek proposed a magical technical Tricorder as an ultra compact futuristic little black bag. You could whip it out and aim it at someone and have scads of useful data instantly.

Reality delivered us new tech like MRIs that require their own room at a hospital. Instead of the doctor going to your home and seeing you in the context in which you live, thereby providing substantial information without having to ask, the patient now goes to the clinic.

The result: The patient has ceased to be a whole person and product of their environment in the eyes of the physician. They are merely a specimen in a petri dish.

At one time, most humans lived in small communities where everyone knew each other and the doctor was one of the smartest and most educated people there. He was in the wisdom business.

Now doctors are expected to still deliver the results of being in the wisdom business while largely being reduced to technicians who lack the wealth of contextual information that once informed their practice of medicine.

This is compounded by larger communities and mobile cultures where we no longer know everyone for years and years.

How we fix this, I don't know.

But I am reminded that House was tentatively called "Everyone Lies" in preproduction. Figuring out the lies being told in every episode was a critical part of solving the medical mystery featured.

Modern physicians no longer know x patient is an alcoholic and hiding it and y patient is a philanderer whose sickly wife stopped sleeping with him years ago and it's both rude and ineffectual to ask about such things. You will likely be lied to.

But details like that are critical to sorting out what's really wrong medically and thus how to treat it effectively. And such issues absolutely fall in the purview of medical humanities, an aspect of the profession that desperately needs rethinking to resolve what ails modern medicine and thus improve health for modern people everywhere.